Crumple
by MissiAmphetamine
Summary: As the war rages on two years post-'final battle', Hermione is captured by the other side and Malfoy is the only hope she has of surviving. ["Granger?" His voice is urgent, but she just sits there and breathes for a moment, feeling violated and still radiating pain, her eyes staring blindly at the cell wall opposite her, her brain frozen in what she thinks dully might be shock.]
1. Part One

**Disclaimer: This is JK's 'verse, I'm just playing in it.**

**Author's Note: **This is a plot bunny that hopped into my head today and decided it wanted to be a two- or possibly three-shot.

There is content throughout this fic that could possibly be triggering, including violence and sexual assault. It deserves a hard M-rating in my opinion. More details about the triggering content and rather particular premise/goal of the fic, can be found in the author's notes at the end of the chapter :)

* * *

**Part One**

"Crumple-horned Snorkack."

The code words are whispered hot in Hermione's ear, and her eyes fly as wide as they can with the bruises and the swelling that disfigure her face, thanks to her enthusiastic welcome to the dungeons. Her heart stutters in her chest and she forces herself not to turn around and meet the eyes of the man who had _known the code_. She doesn't want to draw attention, just in case they are being watched. He must be an informant – a snitch, or someone sympathetic to the Order's goals, but not a member, not a double agent, just a _possible source of information_, as Remus put it. Because that is who the code is meant to identify – someone who _maybe_ she can trust, someone who might be able to help her, _somehow_.

Hermione swallows hard, throat raw and dry as she stares across the dark, torch-lit cell at the brutalised, skeletal prisoners, who are seemingly catatonic, their clothing rags and their flesh sore-ridden. The cells are crowded, but only women occupy this section of the dungeons. Adrenaline sets a fire in her veins and her bruised fingertips flex, scraping on the dank dungeon stones, sharp pains running up her bones and flesh on the fingers that have bloodied wounds where her nails once sat. She had thought she was as good as dead, when they took her, at least a day ago now. Stripped her of her wand and beat her, until blackness had reached up through the pain and swallowed her whole. She had woken here to the sounds of screams echoing from elsewhere in the dungeons.

And now – now she has the barest spark of _hope_.

"_You don't exist_." She murmurs the counter sign, words barely intelligible through her split, swollen lips. Something touches her hair then – fingers reaching through the bars, curling hard in the wild, dirty strands and exerting enough pressure to hold her there, sitting on the damp, moss-slick stones with her upper body slumped to the bars. She stays very still and does not fight – it must be to fool someone walking past nearby, she tells herself, that dangerous grip on her hair. And even if it is not, what exactly can she do about it? She is helpless, utterly and completely, and the man whose fingers twine in her hair is currently her only hope of getting a message out to the Order.

Unless the enemy have tortured the codes out of another captured Order member, and this is all just a trick. She feels ill, fear threading through her as the pull on her scalp increases, creating sharp little stabbing tugs of pain. She whimpers, and squirms on the floor involuntarily. The man speaks at her ear again, muffled, his breath falling over her ear and jaw in hot puffs.

"There's a Snatcher watching us. I – I'm sorry, about this," he says, fast and blurred, voice low, and his tone is _angry_ and ashamed in a way that makes Hermione even more afraid than she already is. "_So sorry_."

She barely has time to process what he has actually said, before a scream breaks her lips. Her hands shove uselessly at the dungeon floor and try to push her _up _as the man's hand wrenches upwards on her hair, tearing it out at the roots and making tears flood her eyes. Her bare feet can't get purchase on the mossy stones and she scrabbles helplessly, initial screams falling to wretched animalistic moans and cries, her hands flailing and shoving at the ground, back arching and her _scalp is on fire._

A hand cages her breast then as she arches and twists, and shock slams through her, revulsion, horror. Those feelings are quickly chased down by hot agony as the hand _squeezes _through her shirt, until it feels like her whole breast is a mass of molten metal on her chest. Hermione forgets that this man is apparently here to help her, because he is _hurting_ her and it _hurts_ and it _hurts_, and she screams and thrashes and weeps and _begs _in a horrible choking slew of pleading. She struggles and tries to escape the pain, but his hand on her breast and in her hair hold her still, and she is weak – beaten and dehydrated and half-starved. And he is not. He is strong and he is _hurting_ her.

His mouth is at her ear.

"_I'msorryI'msorryI'msorry_," he says, like some sick game, over and over in a desperate mutter, and Hermione is only half-aware of what he says. Lost in the pain and the terror and the humiliation, most of it sounds like a mockery, and just makes her sob and shake harder. "Just – just a little longer. You're doing so good. Just a little longer. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Shit, shit, _shit _he isn't _leaving_."

The grip on Hermione's hair eases ever so slightly; the pressure on her breast lets up – his hand searching out over other parts of her body within his reach instead. "Be _still_," he snarls shakily in her ear, and then: "Hey, hey you! Fuck off, would you, you pathetic tosser! This isn't a free fucking show!"

Hermione _knows_ then. She recognises that voice, that _tone_, and numbness settles over her like a blanket of snow as the shock of it hits, and hits hard. She stares at the ceiling as his hand shifts in her hair – still yanking her head back awkwardly and sending needles of pain stabbing into her skull. _Malfoy_, she mouths silently to herself, excruciatingly aware of his hand fumbling roughly over the curve of her waist, across her stomach, reaching around to grab over the other breast. _Malfoy._

"Yeah, _fuck off_, good fucking job," he yells shirtily at the Snatcher he'd said was there, his hand still moving over Hermione's body, his mouth back at her ear. She flinches when he speaks close enough that his face must be pressed to the bars, much as her head is yanked painfully back against them. "I'm sorry. So fucking sorry. He's going – he's nearly…" Malfoy's hand squeezes her left breast now and she whimpers in fear and disgust, and he apologises again, in stumbling, faltering whispers as he tugs and grabs just enough to cause pain that makes her sob a gasp or let out a moan. Very realistic, she thinks muzzily, and it has to be doesn't it, to fool the Snatcher. A sob rattles out of her.

And then his hands pull away from Hermione as though she has burnt him. The Snatcher is gone, she thinks, hazy and weak with burgeoning relief.

"Granger?" His voice is urgent, but she just sits there and breathes for a moment, feeling violated and still radiating pain, her eyes staring blindly at the cell wall opposite her, her brain frozen in what she thinks dully might be shock. She lifts her hands shakily to cradle her breasts which ache and hurt _so much_, and pulls her knees up towards her chest, hunching forward a little and letting out a whimpering sob. "_Granger?_ I'm sorry. _I'm sorry._ I – I didn't – I shouldn't – I just reacted…it seemed like the best way to…_ Fuck. Shit_. Granger, are you…are you…?"

She nods just a little, her wounded fingers rubbing gentle little circles over her breasts.

"I'm fine." It is the barest whisper, and it is a lie, because she is _not_ fine, she is not. But not because of what he just did – although, yeah, that fits in there somewhere. Her heart is going rabbit quick and her breath comes in shaky sobs – there is snot at her nose, and her cheeks are sticky-wet, and thin drifts of her hair are scattered around her, ripped out of her scalp by _him. Malfoy._ She had never – had never heard that he was an informant, or sympathetic to their side, but then they kept the names of such people to as few Order members as possible. Less chance of the information getting tortured out of people – you couldn't tell what you didn't know.

She turns her head slowly, painfully, shifting her bum on the mossy damp of the stones, and staring at Malfoy in the weird half-light. He is on his knees on the stones, his hands wrapped loosely around the bars, and his eyes round and scared, locked to hers. She wonders if this is all a trick, to try to get her to divulge useful information while she believes Malfoy is on her side, and decides it doesn't matter. Whether she believes Malfoy is truly a sympathiser or not – and at this point she very much wants to, because if not then she thinks she might want to die now before… She shudders and refocuses – regardless of what she thinks about whether Malfoy is genuine or not, she still won't tell him anything that could be used against the Order.

"I'm sorry," he says, ashen and horrified, low enough that no one else in the cells could hear, were they aware enough to listen – and from the moans and the crying, some of them were still. "I – I had to hurt you or it would look suspicious. That's the only reason anyone ever comes down here."

"I can tell," Hermione gets out, with a meaningful glance at the women who lie clad in rags and wounds, nothing human left to them at all – just bodies, covered in filth and slowly dying. She isn't accusatory – she can see on his face that he is not accustomed to hurting people in the manner he just hurt her, although she knows he has fought in battles before. She is filled to overflowing with terror that she will become one of the creatures in her cell, despite Malfoy being a sympathiser. A Death Eater sympathiser; what a fucking joke. How has he managed it? To fly under the radar like this, to go unnoticed by Voldemort? Perhaps his age, she thinks – being only nineteen, Voldemort might not expect a great deal from Malfoy yet. Or maybe he has learnt Occlumency skills beyond his years.

"I can't help them," he defends himself roughly and pitifully, looking down at the floor as she stares at him unblinking, his hands tightening white-knuckle around the bars. "I'd never be able to do enough to make a difference without being caught. And then the Order loses their informant."

Hermione can't argue with that, although a small part of her wants to rage, she knows the right target is not Malfoy. She shifts painfully to face him fully, scuffing over the ground so that she is kneeling just in front of the bars, her knees butted up against them. Her arms are still crossed over her chest protectively, and she feels horribly self-conscious and strangely _embarrassed_ as his eyes drag down from her face to fix on her chest for a moment, his expression twisted up.

"I –" he begins helplessly, gesturing at her breasts. "Granger, I'm so sor–"

She is sick of apologies, and there are more important things at stake. "Can you – _can you help me?_"

He shrugs a shoulder, torchlight flickering dulled in his eyes, which are still hollow with shame and shock, but his mouth is set in a determined, cold line. "I don't know. But I'm going to try."

"Why?" Hermione asks – the million galleon question, the one that has been burning in her mind ever since she'd recognised his voice. Why _Malfoy_, the Slytherin Prince. Why is he an informant? Why is he here right now, speaking to her? Putting himself at risk.

"I grew up, Granger. My master told me to murder a man, and I realised that…that I don't have the stomach to be a murderer. That I don't…I don't want _any_ of this. But by then it was too late." His eyes shift to his left forearm – covered by the dark shirt he wears. His lips press together hard as he looks back up at her, his pupils blown in the half-light, making his hollowed eyes look dark. "I'd already been Marked."

"So you decided to risk your life by becoming an informant?" Hermione finds it hard to believe, that selfish, bigoted, childish Malfoy could ever be so noble.

He smiles coldly. "Why not? It's not like I have anything to lose, except my life. And as long as – my master lives, my life isn't my own anyway." He looks down at his hands, releasing the bars and drawing them palm-up into his lap, staring at them as though he can see the bloodstains. "I'd rather not die. But…well, I'm careful. I don't stick my neck out when I think it's too dangerous. And I do what I have to do, Merlin forgive me."

There is a long silence between them, the only sound their breathing, and the muted suffering of the other occupants of the dungeon. Hermione searches Malfoy's face, and sees nothing there but truth. She wonders if she would be able to spot a lie on Malfoy's face, dripping from his lips – and then she wonders why the other side would _bother_ with a lie. She thinks she can trust him enough to let herself hope, just a little bit

"I –" she begins, but Malfoy winces then, the heel of his right hand rubbing down his left forearm, fingers curling over it and breath jerking in between his gritted teeth. The Mark, she thinks, staring at him as the pain of it twists his face and makes him ugly and wounded.

"I – I have to go, Granger," he says, trying to smooth out his features and even his voice, his grey eyes narrowed and his mouth shaped with the pain, the muscles in his jaw bunched, a vein throbbing at his temple. "I'll – I'll…do what I can. All right?"

Fear hits her. He is leaving her alone down here, alone like she was before. When anyone else could come down and _hurt her_ just like Malfoy had, and worse. So much worse. Panic builds up as sobbing gasps in her chest, and she stuffs a fist against her mouth and tries to force them back down. She is so _scared_. What if he never comes back? What if she – she is tortured and raped and murdered down here? What if… It had been easier before she'd been given hope, she thinks dizzily as the breath whoops in and out of her.

And then Malfoy's hand is clasped tight over her knee.

"Granger?" He squeezes gently and she stares into his eyes. She can see the pain in the crinkles at his eyes and the lines carved around his mouth, the infinitesimal strain in his voice. "Granger. Be brave. Okay?" His smile wavers but lifts her spirits a fraction anyway. "You're a Gryffindor. It should come easily to you," he says then, and she actually huffs the shadow of a laugh. Two of his fingers tap her knee in an odd little pat, and then he is straightening to his feet, pushing his fringe off his forehead and breathing deeply and slowly. She can see the subtle transformation take place, his eyes becoming cold and flat, his features turning to stones, his whole demeanour altering, from scared and fumbling to ruthless and indisputably deadly.

"Malfoy?" she says as he begins to walk away, and he pauses and looks back at her. The nothingness on his face scares her. "Thank you," she tells him in a tiny whisper, and the barest hint of a frown crosses his face. He says nothing – perhaps he cannot say anything, as wholly in character as he is, and Hermione merely sinks back down from her knees to her bum, clinging to the bars and watching as he strides away.

_Please_, she thinks in time with every one of his measured steps. _Please._

* * *

Food and water are delivered to the cells what seems like a good four or so hours later. But Hermione has no real way to tell time, so it's just a guess. She hides in a dark corner of the cell when she hears footsteps, thinking about how easily Malfoy had hurt her – how easily a real, loyal Death Eater or Snatcher might hurt her. She has to stay unnoticed, she thinks. Hidden. Safe. Invisible.

But the guards search through the cell to drag out all the women who do not come forward to eat and drink. Corpses mostly, and that ones that are still alive but on the verge of death do not live for long. Rough, brutal hands and boots, not spells, are what end them, and then they are dragged into a pile in the middle of the long walk that runs down between the cells. Hermione watches, huddled behind rags, knowing that she will be found. But by some miracle, they pass her shadowed corner by.

Instead the three guards casually beat several of the more alert prisoners, and one of the guards picks one to rape. Hermione shuts her eyes, but she hears every sound. Her world becomes the slap of flesh on flesh, the dull _uh-uh-uhs_ that judder out of the barely conscious victim with each thrust, the rough, greedy grunts of the guard, until after several mercifully short minutes, the guard makes a low groan. Finished. She feels sick, because that could have been her, and because while it may not have been her, it had still been _someone._ Hermione doesn't open her eyes until the guards' footsteps are long gone. Orange light flickers behind her eyelids, and the acrid smell of smoke fills the air and the need to know what is happening forces Hermione to open her eyes, afraid of what she will see.

She sees nothing but the guards' victims sprawled on the floor, the ones who had been beaten, and the one who was raped. She crawls forward, feeling bile rise sour and bitter in her throat, and stares through the bars at the pile of bodies – seven or eight of them, heaped high and smouldering with flame. The smoke is thick and stinks, mostly chasing up the vent in the ceiling, but tendrils fall away and seep through the air, gradually filling it with the smell of roasting flesh. Hermione's hand clamps over her mouth as she stares, horrified. A pale hand in the pile twitches, and she chokes and whirls away, hiding her face in her hands. She can't…she can't…

The only reason Hermione doesn't throw up is sheer force of will. There is still water to drink, and thin stew to eat, and she refuses to waste the nourishment and liquid she so desperately needs. But first she does what she can for the other prisoners in her cell. The woman who was raped is in a fugue state, like most of them, but Hermione manages to coax her into crawling over to lean against a wall, and drink a little before she moves on to the next woman. And the next. There are six left now, and only one of them is conscious enough to speak – that one spits out the water Hermione tries to dribble between her lips, and rasps over and over that she wants to _die_, just let her _die_. Hermione's hands shake, and her heart is _sick_ with horror.

The cell stinks of fear, blood, and roasted meat as she drinks the water that is left – a meagre glassful – and eats a large bowl of stew; few of the women had been capable of eating. Her stomach roils, but she keeps it all down by trying to think of anything but here, eating mechanically while she determinedly pictures long-ago dinners at the Burrow. She isn't sleepy although she is _wearier_ than she has ever been in her life, but she curls up in a corner anyway, buried beneath rags, and tries to sleep. She prays that Malfoy has been able to do something, anything, toward getting her out.

She dreams of being burnt as a witch, tied to a stake and set aflame by Malfoy, screaming as her flesh crackles and slides sticky-slick from the meat of her, Malfoy's eyes unwavering on her face as the rest of the Death Eaters watch from behind their masks.

* * *

Malfoy doesn't come back by the arrival of the next meal, which is brought perhaps a day later; she doubts they are fed more than once a day. The guards don't bother searching the cell. Hermione thinks perhaps it is a weekly thing. The stench from the burning still hangs in the air, and the half-charred corpses are left there in their heap for now, beginning to gradually rot and stink _more_, in different ways. It is like hell, the smell. She waits for Malfoy, huddled in the back of the cell. She waits, and waits, for several more meals, growing more and more frantic as time goes on. He may be Draco Malfoy, former enemy, but she has accepted his story and now he is a lifeline, he is all she has. Her best hope, right now. _And he hasn't come back._

Hermione doesn't know why, and she tries to tell herself there could be reasons, and that he might not have abandoned her, betrayed her, or been killed. She isn't sure if she believes the excuses she makes up for him, though. Perhaps she is just fooling herself, and she is on her own. It doesn't matter, she decides in the end, with her hands balled into dirty fists in her lap, her hair stringy and lank around her face. All she can do is focus on staying alive, until Malfoy comes through or the Order rescues her. Because they will, she tells herself. They _will_. Hermione refuses to die here, like this, starving and weak and forgotten. She will survive, no matter what it takes, no matter what she has to bear, no matter how much it hurts. Hermione Granger is a _survivor_.

* * *

Half-starved and nearly delirious with the dehydration that makes her tongue thick and her lips cracked, Hermione is just drifting beneath the surface of sleep when a hand wraps in her hair and pulls her up roughly. It hauls at her until she struggles and thrashes up to her feet in an attempt to reduce the yank on her hair. And then thethe assailant traps her between the wall and their warm, hard body.

For a moment she panics and thrashes violently, a low keening sawing raw from her dry throat, but then another hand gently reaches and squeezes her right breast, before releasing it altogether. A crude, awful signal, but one that she recognises with a surge of intense relief, skin crawling anyway. _Malfoy_, she thinks, so relieved that she wants to weep and cling to him with gratitude just for being here.

Just in case someone else is there, watching, she keeps struggling – but less strongly now, sobbing raggedly in terror that she doesn't find hard to fake. It isn't really fake at all. Relieved Hermione might be, but she is still so scared, and she has held the worst of that bone deep, sickening fear bottled up inside her for the last five…six…days. She has lost count. She writhes in Malfoy's grip and sobs it out, and his hand tightens in her hair, wrenching her head back as though to examine her. His eyes are hard, pale marbles pressed into his face, absent of any emotion, and his fringe falls forward over his forehead as he drags at her hair and runs his other hand down to her crotch. He is empty and cold, and _terrifying_, and it feels like a punch in the stomach.

"She'll do," he says as he looks back toward the cell door, his fingers curling gentle but firm against Hermione's crotch through her jeans, and the feeling of violation makes her feel icy and numb and feverish at once. She shakes, so frightened, because what if it had all been a trick, and this is what is real? What if Malfoy really just wants to hurt her and it was all just some sick amusement, to pretend to be on her side? Goosebumps rise on her flesh and she chokes and struggles, the line between what is real and what is not so ragged and confused that she cannot find it any longer.

"Please," she gasps, with a voice that is becoming unused to speaking, the words thick and blurred, and wretchedly, pathetically desperate. She has forgotten whether she means the words or not – whether she needs to say them or not. Whether he will hurt her or not. "Please…_don't hurt me_…"

Malfoy inhales sharply against her cheek, his jaw pressing hard to her temple, his whole body tensing. "But that's part of the fun – isn't it, Theo?" he says mockingly, as his fingers stroke at her through her jeans, and Hermione feels herself crumpling in his grasp. She shakes all over, sobbing without tears, a dry near-hyperventilation, begging again and again.

"…._please…_"

"Well I hope you _can_ have fun with _that_, Draco. I'm going to go see if I can find one of the _fresher _intakes. I prefer my girls…not half-dead," Theodore Nott says with mild distaste, from outside the cell.

"Oh, this one's plenty lively, Theo," Malfoy says, grinding his hips against Hermione's bum. She moans in fear and horror and tries uselessly to wrench away, trying to shove back at him with her elbows and fists, to strike at him with her feet, making terrified little noises she is barely aware of. Malfoy laughs breathlessly as he subdues her and holds her still. "See? Lots of life left in her yet. But you go on and have your fun, Theo. You know I like my privacy anyway."

"Sure you don't want to take the slut upstairs? _Shit_, it fucking _stinks_ in here."

"I'll use a bubblehead, idiot. Maybe you should do the same."

Nott says something in response that she doesn't hear over the whoosh of blood in her ears, but she hears Malfoy's reply: "She'll be no good to you once _I'm_ done with her, Theo. This one…this one I am going to fucking _destroy_," he says with relish. "Dirty little Muggle _bitch_." His hands fasten like iron around her wrists, putting them together so that he can hold both wrists in his one, returning his other hand to her crotch. It is sickening. It is awful. He holds her in place with his body, hard and lean, pushing into her and jamming her breasts painfully against the stones of the wall. Her breath slams in and out frantically, and she is getting dizzier and dizzier, heart _pounding_. She tries to pull away, but she is laughably weak, especially as her dizziness grows and black dots dance in her vision.

Then there is silence, except for her own breaths and the rush of her pulse over-loud in her ears.

Malfoy's jaw brushes against her cheekbone after a brief second of stillness, his hand frozen at the crotch of her jeans, no longer moving. She whimpers at the press of his jaw warm to her cold, filthy skin, still half-hyperventilating, and he makes little shushing sounds then. His hand moves up from her crotch to flatten against her abdomen, as he draws her away from the wall a little, to lean back into him. He drops her wrists, and wraps his arm around her just beneath her breasts instead, holding her up. His hand rests splayed there on her tummy, warm and still, and he whispers in her ear, gently and soothing.

"Breathe. Just breathe. It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you. Just breathe, Granger." Malfoy's words washes over her, and she shuts her eyes and _breathes_, panic retreating, remembering now, and trusting him enough to not fight_. _"I'm not going to hurt you, I swear. I swear. It's okay. Just breathe" His voice hitches as he says _hurt you_, and she can hear him gulp, his own breath a little short and ragged. "Shit. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I had to…you know. But – I had to. Theo…"

"I know," she croaks quietly, the words hurting her throat, and then shudders out a sigh. "I know. I – I just got confused."

He lets her go carefully and she sways on her feet, unsteady. His face is no longer cold and hard, as emotionless as blank slate; he looks human again. He is scared and sorry and full of uncertainty. "We have to – in case Theo comes back…" he says, and her eyes round on him.

"What –" she starts, sharply, scared again on instinct. She takes a step back and her bum and her shoulder blades hit the wall. He steps forward, awkward.

"Not…actually. Just – just looking like we're…" His hands fumble at his belt buckle, and it clinks dully as he undoes it, and unzips his trousers. "You know…"

"_Malfoy!_" she says it breathy and yet forceful, her eyes on his hands, on his crotch, on his black cotton jockey shorts. Merlin. She feels disconnected, heady and dazed with adrenaline, fear, and her starvation rations and solitude.

"Just unzip your jeans and shove them down, all right? Theo has a habit of trying to…catch people in the act, and we can't afford to get caught fucking chitchatting, Granger," Malfoy says urgently, and when she stands there doing nothing, he hisses through his teeth and yanks her jeans button open, drags the zipper down. Her eyes shift to his face, looking for reassurance, and he tries to smile. "I'm not going to actually _you know _– shit, I wouldn't have brought Theo down here if I'd had a choice. But he asked where I was going and I had to tell him or he'd know I was lying, and – well, suffice it to say, this was the best solution I could come up with on the spur of the moment," Malfoy explains in a rough whisper, as he yanks her jeans down, and pulls them entirely off one leg, leaving them hanging around the other ankle.

She just stands there, and lets Malfoy arrange her. She doesn't have the energy to resist even if she wanted to – it takes all she has just to stay upright. He leaves her knickers on, and pushes her back against the wall, shoving down his own trousers around his hips, and pulling his jockey shorts precariously low. He hooks her naked leg up, his arm around her waist, his face nestling down to the crook of her shoulder, hefting her up a little in his arms, experimentally. And Hermione just stands there pliable, feeling distant, floating on clouds of hunger, separated from her body. Malfoy mumbles something about how that should work all right, and then lowers her leg a little and lifts his face. He meets her eyes, a scant inch separating them.

"Granger? Hey, you still with me?"

She nods just barely, her eyes not shifting from his, as though they are her anchor. They are grey and framed by surprisingly dark lashes, and they don't look cold and as unfeeling as glass anymore at all – they are soft and clouded with worry.

"It's okay. I'm not _really _going to…"

"I know," she whispers, but she doesn't sound very certain, even though she is pretty sure she is. But it's been a long…week? She doesn't even know how much time has passed; it has been days of trying to care for the women who she shares the cell with, who are slowly dying around her, feeding them and giving them water, and trying to comfort them. Hiding from the guards. Existing on a glass or two of water a day, and one bowl of thin stew. The stench from the rotting pile of corpses constantly filling the air. Being afraid that Malfoy was never going to come back… Hermione isn't sure of anything anymore.

She wants to shrink from Malfoy and cling to him at once, and she settles for standing frozen in his grasp, his arm around her waist and his hand hooked around her thigh. She licks her lips. "You didn't come back. For so – so long. I thought…"

"I'm sorry. I have to get hold of my contact in the Order, but I haven't been able to get away to leave a message at the drop point yet. My master's been watching me, lately. I think he knows that I was down here, the other day."

"Is he going to want to t-torture me?" she asks in a small, scared voice. His face changes – surprise, shock.

"No – Granger, he doesn't know that you've been captured. He doesn't know you're _here._ The – the Snatchers didn't recognise you, the thick fucking idiots. I saw you, when they brought you in with the others, and _I_ recognised you. I told them I'd get you…_settled in_, and I put you back here, with the ones who…who nobody really wants anymore. The ones that no one important notices. I thought it might keep you safe, for a while."

It is her turn to stare at him in shock. He had done that for her? That was far riskier than what she had thought he'd done. She doesn't know what to say, exactly, stumbling over her words, awkward and uncertain, her hand resting up on his shoulder, finding balance. "Thank you, Malfoy. I – I'd probably be _dead _if you hadn't…"

His fingers squeeze at her thigh as he readjusts her leg, and his pelvis nudges into hers unintentionally as he shifts on his feet, and they both suck in their breaths sharply and look away; she can feel a blush heating her cheeks. She is only glad there is no bulge digging into her – that would be _too_ awful. But he seems as far from aroused as is possible, thank Merlin. They shift against the wall awkward and jerky, and nearly fall, only his quick save keeping them upright. Hermione breathes slowly, trying to keep her balance on the unsteady ground, with one leg wrenched into the air so that it is already beginning to ache and cramp a little.

"Sorry," he mumbles with acute embarrassment as their bodies bump together again, and she shakes her head, brushing off his apology as her hand cups the ball of his shoulder fully, helping to hold them steady.

"The – your contact in the Order. The drop point. When do you think you can do that?"

"I don't know." He shakes his head, frustration crinkling over his brow, and it is so strange to be standing here with _Malfoy_, talking about rescue, and simulating sex. _Rape_, she thinks then, and gulps hard, because that is what it would be were this really happening. She stifles the little whisper of fear that wants to squeak from between her lips, pressing them hard together. Malfoy doesn't seem to notice, going on: "The Dark Lord is watching me closely, like I said. That I'm coming down to the dungeons, especially back to _this _part of the dungeons, is an anomaly. And my master pays attention to anomalies. I don't think we have much time before he realises that you're here, and you're _you_."

Fear ripples down Hermione's spine in icy fingers, but Malfoy keeps talking fast and she tries to focus on his brisk, urgent words.

"We don't have long now either, Granger – Theo doesn't, um, take long, usually. Like I said, he likes to play peeping tom. I only came down here today to place a – a sort of monitoring spell on you. Like Healers use. It will monitor your vitals, and alert me to any changes that indicate you might be in trouble. Just in case... All right?" His eyes scan over her face, looking for her permission.

"Okay." She nods, and Malfoy slides out his wand and mutters a sibilant, complex little spell. She feels the magic shiver over her; it soaks cool and tingling into her skin. Malfoy's eyes skim and skip over her as she slumps there in a near daze, relishing the feel of magic on her. She jerks to full awareness when his thumb drags over her cracked lips, trying to flinch back from him.

"_Don't_," she says, blinking like an owl, watching him nervously, feeling trapped far too close to him. He bites his lip, looking apologetic but not saying it, something that worries her just a fraction lurking in his eyes. His body shifts against hers, and he hisses an inhale that he tries and fails to stifle. His cheeks flush slowly with colour.

"You're dehydrated," Malfoy says instead of his apology, and holds up his wand. "Here; open your mouth." She does so obediently, and he whispers _"Aguamenti" _and a trickle of water emerges from the tip of his wand. He puts it between her lips, and she moans in pleasure as it bathes her mouth, running down her throat and spilling out over her chin.

Then footsteps sound, and Malfoy swears under his breath, _finiting _the spell and slipping his wand back up his sleeve. "I'm sorry," he murmurs in Hermione's ear, and she tries to mentally brace herself as she swallows the last of the sweet, cool water. "But you can fight me, if you want. This – this won't be pleasant – I have to make this look…real," he says, and her heart sinks, her stomach lurches with fear. "Theo needs to know the girl I'm – I'm raping, is _scared…_horrified…_hating_ it."

Then Malfoy's hand buries in Hermione's hair and he drags at it hard enough that she genuinely struggles against him before she can think about it, tears springing to her eyes. "I'm sorry." She barely hears it whisper from between his lips, as he begins to rut himself against her thigh, his eyes turning away from her. And within seconds, she feels an erection slowly swell. She gulps, feeling _sick_ and scared and not knowing how much to fight, and not knowing how far he will go…she feels like she is really going to be violated, and her breath comes in sobbing coughs.

And then Malfoy lets her hair go and slaps her, hard enough that the shape of his fingers will blaze red on her skin. She cries out and Malfoy grins and does it again, harder, and pain _flares_. Again, again. She chokes and screams. She hates this. She hates him.

"Don't!" she cries instinctively and flinches away as he raises his hand again, and he laughs at her, face stony.

"What should I do then? Do you want me to fuck you again? Is that what you want, bitch?" He drags her knickers aside and she chokes on spit and _thrashes_, begging him not to – not just to give Nott the show he expects, but because – because _he is touching her there._

"_Don't!_" The backs of his fingers brush rough over the dark curls and soft flesh nestled between her thighs and she gasps and stiffens, trying to wrench her leg down from where he has it yanked up to his hip, trying to _protect_ herself. Malfoy fights her, holds her still, cups her bare vulva firmly – "_Stop!_" she spits at him, clawing at his arms. He huffs a derisive sound and lets her knickers snap back into place with a force that hurts, and knocks her arms down, slides one hand around her throat to pin her to the stone wall, leaving the other free. He shoves it down her knickers again, and she chokes against his the squeeze of his hand around her throat as he fumbles ineffectively down her knickers.

"You're dry as a bone again, you frigid little cunt," he complains, and he is avoiding her gaze, staring at her chest as he slaps her crotch hard with one hand. She cries out and tries to double over at the pain, and he steps back and lets her, and then shoves her rest of the way to the ground. He pushes her with one foot, knocking her onto her side, his eyes flat. His erection juts out against his jockey shorts, and he swears at her as he jerks up his trousers and arranges his erection inside them.

"Bitch," he tells her, and spits on the ground by her face, and she flinches, lying there shivering, staring up at him, every muscles trembling, tears and snot smearing her face. She curls up, making a ball on the ground, trying stupidly to hide, hands covering the front of her knickers as though they can protect her. He had – he had – when Malfoy had said they wouldn't actually…but _that_, that had felt like _actually_ to her. She shuts her eyes, blocking out the sight of him. For a moment she doesn't care that he was helping her – she just _hates _him. _Loathes_ him.

"Theo," she hears Malfoy say with just the right note of mildly irritated surprise. "I thought I told you I like privacy?"

"To what, dry hump the bitch?"

Malfoy laughs. "I'd already fucked her once, Theo. And you can't talk anyway – I know why you always sneak off to the south tunnel. It's where they keep all the pretty boy–"

"Fuck up, Malfoy!" Nott snarls and Malfoy chuckles again, footsteps leading away from her, and the shrieking creak of the cell doors swinging open and then shut again rings through Hermione's head.

"Ladies first, Theo," he mocks, voice more distant. "I won't shit on _your_ predilections, if _you_ don't mock me for only getting in one fuck."

There is a long pause, and then Nott says something that sends chills down Hermione's spine, and makes her hide her face by curling up even tighter, shoulders shaking, body slowly going numbed with cold from the stone floor, and maybe shock as well.

"Hey," Nott says. "Don't I know that girl?"

"I wouldn't think so," Malfoy says with perfectly relaxed timing. "She's a Muggle, far as I know. Come on, Theo. I'm sick of the stench down here. Fucking animals."

She lies on the ground and cries until she has no more tears left, feeling violated and beaten, because she _was_. _Fucking animals. _The words run around and around in her head until she thinks they will drive her mad. Malfoy is far too convincing an actor; none of that felt pretend to Hermione. None of that felt pretend at all. He had said to her that they weren't actually going to…he had lied about that. But he hadn't lied when he had told her it wouldn't be pleasant. It takes a very long time for her to scrape herself up off the ground and pull her jeans back on, and once she has, all she can do is stumble over to the corner she has claimed as her own and curl there beneath the rags, imagining what it will be like when she is rescued.

When she sees Harry again, and Ron, and she is _safe_, and all of this is a distant nightmare.

When she is _free_.

* * *

**Author's Note: **

Essentially the premise of this fic is about the trope of Draco being a (not-necessarily loyal) Death Eater who for some reason has to sexually assault/rape Hermione in order to protect her shortly after they first meet in the story.

Generally I find this trope extremely squicky. I'm capable of forgiving a lot of the characters thanks to extreme circumstances; there are some things, however, that cross the point of no redemption for me.

I especially don't like it when Draco is doing it unnecessarily because he 'loves' her; when he could reduce the trauma by telling Hermione he's on her side without it being too much extra risk but doesn't; when he 'makes' her enjoy it physically and/or mentally; and when their romantic relationship starts partially thanks to the rape, because she likes it/grows to like it/develops Stockholm Syndrome. What can I say; I'm picky.

But, is it possible to write a fic that involves a sexual assault/rape shortly after they first meet in order to protect her, that doesn't taint the relationship that follows between them as per my standards? I'm sure it is, and I'm sure they've already been written (give me some recs please if you know of any!) but this is my perspective on it.

What do you think?

I have tried to depict the assault as realistically, as I could, in terms of emotional impact and effect on the characters.

But, I also wanted to see if I could ride the edge between creating both titillating and horrifying feels for the reader, in my writing of the prose.

I would love your feedback on whether I succeeded at any of these things, so far, and of course whether you enjoyed it!

Next chapter is half-finished already, and will be up asap :3


	2. Part Two

**Author's Note: **Thank you, shiny awesome folks, for all your wonderful reviews! I appreciate your feedback so much ::all the hearts:: I'm so glad you think I'm managing to walk the thin line between awful-but-acceptable and unforgivably-squicky, so far. I hope I continue to do that successfully in this chapter, which is **not** for the faint of heart. I have tried to present the situation not gratuitously, but with a stark realism, and warrents a hard M-rating.

**TRIGGER WARNING: Sexual assault, graphic imagery, violence, horror themes.**

* * *

**Part Two**

Hermione manages to stay unnoticed for two more meals, time that goes past without any more visits from Malfoy. She finds herself missing him, craving the illusion of security his presence had given her before Nott had come back. She still feels sick to her stomach over what Malfoy had done to her – _had_ to do to her – but she understands that right now, some minor violations were better than what could be happening. Malfoy has saved her life, and while he has hurt her…well, she saw the sick, horrified shame in his eyes. She knows that he didn't want to. She is lucky, relatively speaking. It could be so, so much worse.

And then on the third meal after Malfoy's last visit, the guards do a thorough search of the cell and find her this time, huddled in her corner. Her luck has run out. They laugh, and drag her out into the middle of the cell by her upper arms and hair, and throw her hard onto the ground. The shock of hitting the stone judders up her arms from her palms as she catches herself, and her right knee hits an uneven jut of stone om the floor bruisingly hard.

"_Please!_" she gasps as she rolls onto her back and then does a clumsy sort of crab walk away from the three grinning guards. She stares up at them with genuine, sick terror and _begs_ because she has heard the stories before from Order members, and she knows that there is no virtue in being defiant and brave. Pleading doesn't usually do much good either, but maybe…. "_Please! Don't!_"

One of them laughs at her terror, the sound sharp and jarring, and advances on her. "We've got quite a tidy little live one 'ere, boys. Wonder what she's doing in the used up section; scrub 'er up and she'd be a tasty morsel. Wouldn't she?"

"Aye," says another one, rubbing his hands together and leering. Hermione scrambles back, hand scrabbling for a loose bit of stone she can use as a weapon. Her breath wrenches frantically, edging towards hyperventilation, and with a jolt of hope, she wonders if her panicked breathing will show up on Malfoy's monitoring spell. Rather than trying to calm herself, she breathes faster and faster, sucking in breaths, trying to balance on the edge between dizzy and actually passing out. Maybe. _Maybe_ it might work. She doesn't know if he is even around to help her, if the monitoring spell alerts him, but she has to try. "Please," she begs again. "Please don't hurt me."

'Oh, little girl, I'm afraid that we don't want to do anything _but _hurt you," the third man says with mock apology as he advances on her. "But keep begging, if you like."

Quick as lightning his foot lashes out, his boot toe slamming into the small of her back, and the blow drives her to the side, she tries to twist away from it and _screams _at the pain. Her hands slap at the ground as she tries to scramble away, and her fingers flex and tighten around a piece of stone large enough to fit comfortably in her fist. Another kick – she screams and arches her back, falling back onto the ground, wrenching for air. Another, another – they have converged on her and they are kicking her as though she can somehow survive it. She makes a ball on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chest, tucking her chin, and covering her head, screaming for them to stop.

Finally there is a pause, in which she lies dazed on the ground a mass of throbbing, wrecked pain, while they seem to admire their handiwork.

"D-d-don't," she moans incoherently, trying to flail away from the three men, her vision sparking out from the pain seizing through her. Her whole body feels like a raw, flayed nerve. Everything hurts – _everything_. Everything is agony. They're going to _kill_ her if they keep doing this. She is going to _die_. And where Malfoy is, she has no idea. He isn't coming. "Pl-plea-ease, _stop_. I'll do whatever you want!"

"That's right – you fucking well _will_, whore," says the biggest of the three, and grabs Hermione by her shirt, hauling her to her feet and backhanding her across the face. Her head _snaps_ to the side and she makes a grunting moan, driven out of her by the blow. Pain sears down her spine. But her fingers are firm around the stone. She is going to die. She knows it. She is going to be beaten and raped to death in a cell in some dank dungeon somewhere. The man hits her again, and Hermione's scream of shock and pain is gasping and choked, a wheezing exhalation. The whole left side of her face feels numbed and raw.

This is how it ends, she thinks, dizzy and sick.

"Merlin's balls, you're a pretty little thing," the man says to her, ironic considering her face is already swelling from his blows – she can feel it puffing, the skin going taut. He grasps her more securely by her shirt and slams her up against the cell bars, the cold iron sending agony shooting through her spine and throughout her limbs, her head knocking into a bar and making hurt ring in her skull like a bell. The man's mouth dips to her throat in a mockery of a lover, suckling hard and painful at the skin there, raising marks that she knows will bloom in vivid bruises in the hours to come, if she lives that long.

_Now_, she thinks dazed with pain and what she expects is a concussion.

Hermione raises her arm and _swings_ it down, driving the stone into the man's head as hard as she can, which isn't half as hard as she wished it could be, but is still better than nothing. Better than her fists alone. He drops her with a groan, staggering, and she lands on her feet and by a miracle they don't go out from under her. But being on her feet hardly helps – the man is only badly dazed, fallen against the bars and groaning – and his two friends are fine. And Hermione is racked with pain and trapped still. She skitters away from the man she has just brained, her steps unsteady and the world tilting around her, her every muscles seizing with a bone deep pain from the kicking they had given her, and then…

She crumples.

Pain ricochets through her.

The sound of laughing mixed with the angry swearing of the man Hermione had hit, and then hands on her, rolling her onto her back, tearing at her clothing – ripping her shirt open and trying to haul her jeans down her legs. She blinks her eyes open, and between the leaping torchlight and the swirling in her head she catches only shattered, nightmarish glimpses, greying out. She begs them in slurred, desperate pleas.

"Please don't." A mouth clamps over hers, tongue sweeping sick-making over her lips and teeth. A face leers down at her, and fingers pinch her nose shut, a tongue licking at her own tongue when her mouth opens to gasp for breath. She wrenches her head away, sobbing for air. "_Please_, stop." She blinks up around her blearily and cringes in sick terror at the sight of one of the men stroking his erection as he stands and watches. "Stop." Hands paw at her breasts through her dirtied bra. Fingers prod at her through her knickers. "_Don't._" A heavy weight settles over her legs. Nausea roiling through her, can't think, can't – can't… _Please. Please don't. _She struggles pitifully.

_Please._

"She. is. _mine_." Malfoy's voice, cutting the air and filled with deadly intent. Hermione hears it even through the fog and pain of her half-conscious state, and her swollen eyes force open. Hope and sharp relief overwhelm her. Malfoy stands in the cell door, mostly visible past the man who has been trying to get her knickers off. His wand is in his hand, and he breathes hard as if he ran here, shoulders heaving and fringe falling over his eyes. He looks like he wants to murder every single one of the men – he looks like he _could_, without a single bit of trouble.

"You _wot?_" one of the men asks, and Malfoy takes a step forward, icy fury bright in his eyes, and written in every taut line of his face.

"The girl is _mine_."

"She hit me – hit with a fuckin' _rock!_"

"That doesn't make her any less _mine_, you idiotic piece of excrement," Malfoy snarls, stalking toward Hermione and shoving one of the men back away from her. She blinks up at him, trying to say his name with lips that are bloody and puffed to twice their usual size. Pain and horror flash in his eyes, as if in a muted echo of her own.

"Granger," he mutters, and his voice is as sickened and horrified as his eyes. _Malfoy_, she tries to say, relief maddeningly intense, making her want to shake and cry, to come to pieces there on the floor. He flattens his mouth and glares at the man who is still hunched over her, paused in the act of trying to take her knickers off. "Get the _fuck_ off her."

"Why should I?" the man says, standing, tall enough that he is a good two inches taller than Malfoy, and twice the breadth. Hermione blinks muzzily up at them – they _all_ look like giants to her from down here. She stifles the absurd urge to giggle.

"Because of this, perhaps, for starters?" Malfoy hisses, jerking his sleeve back in short tugs to show off his Dark Mark, and the man's eyes go round in shock and he takes a stumbling step back. Hermione nearly manages a smile at the fear on the man's face.

"I didn't – sorry. I didn't know you was a – a – one of them," the man apologises abjectly, shuffling backward, away from Malfoy and Hermione. "We just…we didn't think she was anyone's…"

"We had no idea. Most sorry, Mister…?" the best-spoken of the three ventures apologetically.

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy," he bites out, looking more furious than Hermione has ever seen him, his nostrils flaring and his fists bunching at his sides, his posture braced for duelling, his eyes flicking down to her every few heartbeats. "And yes, you had _best_ be sorry."

"We'll just be, er, going then. And no need to mention this to anyone, is there?"

Malfoy's eyebrow twitches upward just the faintest bit. "I – I suppose not," he agrees, sounding reluctant, and Hermione realises just how convenient that is. If the men don't tell anyone, then – then her presence will remain a secret just that much longer. Which is what they _want._ The men all make their apologies, the smartest one chivvying the other two along hurriedly, while Malfoy stands in front of Hermione like a guard dog. It is only when they have been gone a full thirty seconds and their footsteps no longer echo off the walls that he sheathes his wand and drops to his knees at her side, sheer panic written all over his face.

"Granger. Granger, fucking shit, what – what the _fuck_. Are you – did they…tell me what I need to fix. _Tell me._" Malfoy is frantic with his worry for her - for _her_ - and then suddenly he falters to a stop and his face goes hard and cold, and then what little colour he has drains from his complexion completely. He stares down at her in horror.

"Oh shit. Oh _Merlin_, I said your name. Granger, I said your _fucking name_. That's why they were so _fucking _eager to leave." His fist slams into the stone beside her head, and his eyes are stricken on hers as she gazes blurrily at him. "I've fucked it. I've…I've _fucked_ it." His hand lifts and his thumb drags down her right cheek, before falling to the ground beside her neck, forearm shifting against the side of her throat as he tenses in fury.

"I am so sorry." He bites his bottom lip so hard that in fascinated horror she sees one of his teeth pop through the skin, and blood wells up. His hands shake as he begins whispering spells through his bloodied lips, and the pain starts to slowly ease a little.

"It's all right, Malfoy. You – they would have killed me if you hadn't come," she whispered, and he gives her a bitter little flash of a smile, and his voice when he speaks is hard and cold, his face very still, emotions swiftly masked.

"And now I could have killed us both."

"…_will_ he…?" she asks in a tiny little voice, thinking of what could be to come, and terrified despite her best attempts to be brave. Malfoy knows what she means. He carefully wriggles up her jeans, shrugging at her question. He seems brittle right now, as if he will snap if someone bends him too far. There is no give; he is a knife blade and she does not know if that is what they need right now. But as before, Malfoy is her only hope. And for the second time, he has risked his life to save her.

"I don't know. I might – I might still…might still be able to pull this off. I don't know." He stammers when he speaks and pauses in his healing attempts, scrubbing his hand angrily through his fine, pale hair, his brow furrowed with crawling thoughts. "My master – he's going to be furious that I hid your presence from him, but…we might not be dead yet, Granger." He nibbles at his lip, eyes far away, before he focuses them sharp and nearly-manic on her, and begins casting healing charms again. "…Maybe."

* * *

The floor under her knees is hard, and the air around her is hot, scented heavily, and stiflingly close; all wrong, _wrong_. She wants to go mad – to scream and sob and rip her own hair out. Only Malfoy's presence close beside her, is helping her stay in control of herself. And from the looks he keeps flashing her that she catches sight of out of the corner of her eye, he seems to feel much the same way about her. When his hand curls in her hair gently – but clearly meant to show he still feels superior and is not a Muggle lover – it actually makes her feel _safe_. That is how terrified she is, right now. He is her only hope at protection, now that Voldemort has waved aside her usefulness as a hostage, or bait – quite cavalierly, she thinks, ridiculously almost _insulted_ that she is not important enough to merit a special status as prisoner.

The huge room is filled with people; the idiot Snatchers in the dungeons have managed to attack her on the very evening that Voldemort is having one of his infamous revels. Dead, dying, and brutalised Muggles and Muggleborns are scattered throughout the room in a manner that Voldemort no doubt thinks is artistic. The knees of Hermione's jeans are sodden with congealing blood, from a body of a child that lies nearby, skinned and tossed to the floor like a naked doll. It is probably the worst one of them all.

Hermione has been trying very hard not to look at it – staring at Malfoy's boots on the bloodied floor instead, or sneaking the occasional glance up at his face. No hint of reassurance on as he bows his head, daring to meet her eyes without expression now and then as he makes his obeisance to his Lord. He is the very picture of a remorseful, loyal Death Eater - perfectly obedient and apologetic.

Voldemort has been lecturing him in that eerie, high voice for long enough now that Hermione's knees are a mass of soreness, and her still-wounded body aches all over. It seems he doesn't care so much that Malfoy might 'want Hermione for himself', as Malfoy has allowed Voldemort to believe – no, what bothers Voldemort is the deceit, apparently. The omittance of the truth. The dishonesty of it all. Hermione wants to strangle the Dark Lord, who lounges on his self-appointed throne and waxes poetic on and on about how _disappointed_ he is in Malfoy, his wonderfully promising young protégée.

"I'm afraid, Draco, my dear boy, that for omitting the truth from me, there must be...consequences."

Malfoy's breath jerks in audibly, and he shuts his eyes, his jaw clenching as he nods once. "Yes, my Lord. Of course," he says quietly, and Hermione's heart aches at the devastated terror in Malfoy's eyes, and she is so _angry_.

"_Crucio!_" Malfoy doesn't flinch, or cower like so many would. But when the spell hits, he doubles over and falls to his hands and knees, a scream torn out of his throat, and Hermione stuffs her hands against her mouth and bites down on her knuckles, horrified.

"_Crucio!_"

Malfoy crumples on his face in the congealing blood that coats the floor as his limbs jerk and fail him, and his mouth is stretched wide in a silent scream, his eyes are screwed shut and helpless little _'ngh ngh ngh'_ sounds pant from his throat. Hermione kneels there beside him as still as a china doll, and she want to do something – to shelter him from the pain, to stop Voldemort, to _make it stop_. But if she says anything in Malfoy's defence it might only make his case worse; Voldemort has used Legilimency on Malfoy, who must know Occlumency to have hidden the truth from his master. Hermione does not know it, and if she draws attention to herself she could give them both away completely.

So she bows her head and shuts her eyes, holding her hands in fists at her sides as Malfoy screams and writhes and gasps beside her. She feels like the worst kind of person, letting it go on without speaking up, but there is nothing she can _do_. Tears paint her cheeks, and she bites her tongue so hard that it fills her mouth with coppery blood-tainted saliva. And Malfoy screams, crumpled on his face in the blood, his body wrenched in a rictus of agony that goes on and on. Hermione finds herself wishing Malfoy's parents were present – perhaps they would step forward and try to help their son – but they are _not_, and Malfoy is alone.

When it finally ends, Malfoy is still and silent, and Hermione cannot help but wonder if he is dead. Her palms have been bloodied by the gouges of her nails, and her body is knotted with tension. It runs out of her when Malfoy lets out a whimpering, hacking cough, and twitches on the floor; her shoulders slump and she exhales heavily. He is alive. Thank Merlin.

His fingers flex on the sticky floor and then _push_, shoving him up onto his hands and knees, and wherever the blood is not smeared dark crimson his skin is so ashen it is nearly grey, and his hands tremble as if palsied. His eyes meet hers for a moment, and his gaze is thunderstorms and silver, unfocused and half-wild.

He stands with an effort, swaying on his feet with his head down. "Thank you, my Lord. I - I shall not fail you again," he says weakly, and Hermione wants to scream that no, no, he shouldn't be _thanking _the monster, even though she knows that he has to.

And then Voldemort says it.

"Perhaps I should have the mudblood killed, as an added consequence. To ensure you learn your lesson."

Malfoy jerks his head up for the first time, and shakes it in a frantic, frightened 'no'. "My Lord – My Lord, _please_."

Hermione's heart thunders and she stares down at the blood pooled around her knees blankly, her vision blurring out. Death – death would not be the worst fate that could befall her, she supposes, and then wishes she hadn't thought that only a moment later.

"Should I have her be the star of our evening's entertainment, then? Let everybody have a turn?" Voldemort suggests airily, and Hermione can hear the strain trembling in Malfoy's voice.

"My Lord…I – I want her, my Lord. For – for myself. Please. She is…"

"Yes," Voldemort encourages with a disturbingly gossipy tone to him, as though he is a fascinated teenage girl talking about crushes. Hermione stifles a hysterical, whooping laugh. "Yes, she is _what?_ What is she exactly, Draco? We are all _ears_."

"She is the only person who ever managed to best me consistently at Hogwarts, My Lord," Malfoy said as though the words were being torn out of him, and Hermione risked a glance up – he looked furious and sullen and terrified at once, but everything filtered through an overlay of abject respect for his master. "She was the mudblood _bitch_ who made me look bad. And now – now I want her to be _mine, _so I can put her in her place." He _grates_ it out full of hate and loathing, and his shaking hand clasps in her hair, he looks down at her with an odd, possessive little sneer, and Hermione has to suppress a trickle of fear.

Malfoy is a bloody excellent actor.

"Very well," Voldemort says, perking up, amusement cruel on his inhuman features as he stares at Malfoy and Hermione. "If you want the mudblood to be yours and no one else's, then claim her as that, in front of everyone here, so there can be no doubt. _You_ can be the evening's entertainment. After all, this is a revel, is it not?" There is a brief, heavy silence. Hermione's head spins, and she feels her gorge rise along with her panic. Claim her as his? Evening's entertainment? She _knows_ what that means without having to be told.

She stares up at Voldemort in stark, helpless fear, and sees him gesture with his wand for an answer from Malfoy. Her eyes flick to Malfoy - his eyes dull and his limbs shaky from the Cruciatus, the blood from the floor drying dark on his face and his clothes. His shoulders are sunk in defeat, and his lower lip trembles briefly before he flattens his mouth.

"Yes, my Lord," Malfoy says quietly at last, strain running raw through his voice. "It is."

"Well then, let us have some revelry!" Voldemort ceies cheerfully, like some kind of terrible child, his high voice crawling with eerie satisfaction. He stands, gliding across the floor in bare feet, carefully avoiding the swathes of blood with delicate steps. "That settles it. My loyal followers, please, gather around! We have a rare entertainment this evening; our young Mister Malfoy shall have what I believe is his first _proper_ participation in a revel." Voldemort glances over at Malfoy for confirmation as he waves his wand, summoning everyone to move closer, and Hermione realises that it is going to happen. Malfoy can do nothing to stop it.

Hermione's breath is stuttering and dying in her chest. She is panicking. No. No. _Nononono. _This cannot happen. She stares down at the blood of strangers beneath her knees with staring, blank eyes. _No. No._ She does not know if it is better or worse, that it is going to be Malfoy. She wonders if he is just as afraid, just as sickened by the thought of being forced to...do it to her. Voldemort will be hurting both of them, she knows, although it is hard to see things from Malfoy's perspective, tumbling headfirst into mad horror as she is. It is hard not to see him as the enemy.

"Yes, my Lord. It is the first time," Malfoy says in a hollow, lifeless voice that does not hide his feelings well, and his fingers jerk involuntarily in Hermione's hair. She is shaking – shivering all over as though she is having a fit, and the room is too small, everything is too close, and people push around with goblets full of drink, laughing with cruel faces, and Malfoy's fingers pull unintentionally at her hair.

"Well, what _fun_," Voldemort enthuses, clapping his hands together delightedly, and that is when Hermione snaps.

She rips her head from Malfoy's grasp, thin straggles of hair coming out and a stifled scream erupting from her lips. She scrambles away, stumbling to her feet and running. She doesn't _think_, isn't _thinking_, just wanting to get away. Get away. Get away.

She makes it exactly twelve steps before the first person grabs her. She thrashes and screams and bites and claws against multiple people, her fists and feet flying, writhing like an eel as people drag her back to Malfoy, who stands motionless, a statue. She stares up at his blood smeared face as hands hold her by her hair and shoulders on her knees before him, her expression horror-struck and raw, and his echoing that. Her eyes plead hopelessly with him.

"Malfoy…" Hermione whispers, as people jeer and cheer and roar around them, and Voldemort watches placidly from his resumed position on his throne. "Malfoy, _please_."

"Don't run," he tells her dull and tight, and she stares at him mutely, _shaking._ "If you run, they'll only bring you back to me. Because you are _mine_, you _filthy little mudblood whore_," he tells her, voice become a vicious snarl. The back of his hand snaps across her already swollen, hurting face and she yelps woundedly and struggles helplessly against him, sobbing.

"_You are mine_," Malfoy tells her, and his hands tear her filthy, ragged shirt from her shoulders as the hands of the crowd let her go. Her eyes dart about desperately – pointlessly – but the people are jammed around them, and Malfoy is right: they will only drag her back. They don't have a choice, either of them. It is this or their torture, and her eventual, terrible death. This is better, this is preferable, this is _hell. _Hermione bows her head, her shoulders slump, and she doesn't fight him anymore. She lets him do it, and tries very, very hard to drift away, mentally – to be anywhere but there, lying stripped bare and pliable under Malfoy's hands.

He is full of awful, terrible words, and his hands maul and hurt her perfunctorily – just enough to satisfy the watching crowd, but no more. It is still far, far too much though – the revellers are bloodthirsty and cruel. Hermione just lies there and shuts her eyes, feeling waves of nausea swim over her, cutting though the pain of what she already feels from earlier injuries, and what he does to her now. She wonders if it is worse for him, to have to do it; to be forced to participate actively, to be the one inflicting it upon someone else instead of just enduring it.

His fingers pinch and twist at her nipples until she screams from it, her eyes screwed shut and her hands fists at her sides, and she doesn't care anymore. She hates him anyway.

It takes Malfoy far too long to get an erection, and he is swearing under his breath ferociously as he tries and tries to get hard, sweating and panting on top of her, his frustration palpable and desperate. His forehead drops to pillow on one of her deeply bruised breasts, and he spits and gasps a slew of hateful curses, his body settling half naked on her completely nude one. Hermione flinches beneath the heavy heat of him at first, but there is nothing terrible in his body on her like this. It is a brief reprieve, covered from the sight of the revellers, a brief moment without him hurting her. And all she can think is that Malfoy's performances issues could ruin everything.

"I _can't..._" he begs wrecked against the soft, bruised swell of one breast. There is a sob in his voice, and wetness on her breast that could be his sweat, or his tears. Hermione's hand jerks stiffly out of its fist and lifts up off the floor, fingers pressing against the side of his hip briefly, in all the reassurance that she can bring herself to give. She hates him for making her say it, even if it isn't his fault any more than it is hers.

"Haff to," she murmurs slurred angry at him with ruined lips, barely understandable, urgent. "Jus' _do_ i'."

It hurts when Malfoy pushes into her at last – she is dry, and tense with fear and pain, and he is awkward and has to be too forceful to enter her, as unready as she is. Her face scrunches with pain, and her fingers scrape on the floor. He thrusts quick and hard without finesse and the breath huffs out of her, raggedly keeping time. Thank Merlin he does not try to make it pleasant for her. Despite this, the occasional spark of accidental pleasure wrenches a muffled moan out of Hermione's lips – but most of the sounds she makes are those of pain.

Malfoy is totally silent except for his heavy drags for air.

Hermione opens her eyes. His are open too, just inches from hers and so pale surrounded by the blood drying on his face, and when their eyes meet his rhythm stutters and falters, and he squeezes his eyes tightly closed. Shame is written sharp on his face, shame and pain and a kind of self-hatred Hermione never wants to feel. It is hard to hate him, when he is hurting too. In the end, it is just so fucking _sad_, and perhaps the very worst thing about it is the people watching; the humiliation of having them jeer at her, cheer over her _despoiling_, over her _punishment_. It is awful. Hermione hates them all, so much.

Malfoy cums inside her, when he finishes – with a soft little grunt of pleasure that she can tell he tries very hard to stifle, that burns into her brain, that she will never forget, and when he drags her to her knees afterwards, his cum and traces of her own blood trickle slowly down the inside of her thighs.

"She is _mine_," Malfoy says to the room at large, coated in dried blood like some barbarian, hooking his shorts up over his erection, gripping her hair like she is a trophy as she sways naked on her knees beside him, dazed and lost in the fog of shock.

"She is _mine_." A growl edges his voice, and no one argues with him – some clap and cheer, but most just turn away, to lose themselves in whatever depravities and horrors they had been indulging in earlier.

Voldemort smiles thinly and waves his hand – apparently indicating that they are free to go, because they do then. Malfoy lets go of Hermione's hair and pulls her to her feet by her arm, leading her stumbling from the room in her nakedness, his pace too quick for her because _everything_ hurts now, even her insides. Her feet trip numbly on the floor and her head hangs limply, hair falling in lank handfuls around her face. She doesn't know…what just happened? Oh god. Oh _god._ She can't process it. Can't… A sob escapes her.

As soon as Malfoy shuts the door to the hall where the revelry is taking place he drops her arm and staggers a step back, clutching at the wall beside him and retching dryly, gasping and shuddering. Hermione just stands there numbly, hugging herself. She wants to crumble to the ground and shiver into a million screaming pieces, and she can't _do_ that so instead she stands very, very still, the air wisping cold over every inch of her naked skin.

Malfoy looks like he wants to say something when he straightens, but his lips move stutteringly without anything coming out, and then he ducks his head and shoves his hand rough through his fringe, pushing it back. He makes a hesitant half-step toward her after another few heartbeats pass. Hermione flinches back on instinct, feeling so horrifically exposed and violated; naked and cold and trembling, with his cum sliding down her thighs, pinked with blood from the abrasions she can feel acutely. She doesn't trust him; her mind fuzzed with concussion and shock, and her body remembering only the trauma he has just inflicted on it.

She stares at him from behind strings of her lank hair with shoulders hunched and arms hugging herself – a beaten dog expecting a blow. Her breath sucks in and out, and the beginnings of wild, horrified sobs building in her chest. Malfoy makes a small, harsh noise in his throat and drops his gaze to the floor, shame and self-loathing radiating off him like heat from flames. He swallows, throat bobbing, and then strips off his bloodied shirt, his skin pale and stained faintly in smears and streaks with blood. Hermione makes herself stand still and doesn't cry out or cringe away as he very gently swings the shirt to settle around her shoulders. He tugs and pulls with painfully gentle, tender motions, fussing absurdly but getting her covered up – the hem of the shirt settles at mid-thigh.

A sob rattles out of her at the gentleness of his hands, and she is ashamed that something so small could mean so much to her right now. Her shoulders heave and there is a cracking pain in her chest as the avalanche of sobs trapped inside her threatens to burst out. She chokes on one and whimpers, and her chest heaves and judders frantically as she tries to keep control.

"Not here," Malfoy says very, very tightly, shaking just as much as her, and his eyes are wet and stricken – he smudges the back of his hand over one, and presses his lips so hard together that they go white. He goes on a moment later, and his voice breaks a little in the middle; urgent and soft and broken. "My room is – is this way. You'll be…safe, there. Just…keep it together, Granger. Just until we get to my room. Okay?"

Malfoy edges carefully closer to her and reaches out as if she is a wild animal he is approaching. Hermione feels she should say something but doesn't know _what _as he gently snugs her fingers in his grip, to lead her with him. Her skin crawls all over at the touch, but she pads alongside him numbly and tells herself over and over that _he is not the enemy_. Malfoy is not the one to blame. Not really. The enemy is Voldemort, the one who forced them to…who made Malfoy do it…and _Malfoy_ didn't want to either, and he was a victim too, and… Hermione doesn't even know. How is she supposed to handle this? A sob hitches out of her throat, and Malfoy's eyes turn down to her, worried.

"It's just a little further, Granger.

"And – and then what? Then what, Malfoy? Then everything will be magically better?" she asks, full of a wretched bitterness, and hugs her free arm around herself tightly; still feeling as though she might shatter apart at any moment, still incapable of wrapping her head around even the thought of processing what had just happened. She sways on her feet and another sob shakes out of her. She wants to curl into a tiny ball and cry until she is wrung out and empty; nothing left. Malfoy hisses through his teeth and then shakes his head, hollow-eyed and ashen beneath the blood smears.

"No. I wish there could be, but…no." His eyes sweep her face nervously as he tugs her gentle around a corner, his eyes darting about, on the alert for others she supposes. He will protect her; she knows that. He just can't protect her well enough. He keeps talking, perhaps trying to distract them both until they reach the relatively safety of his room. "There's a bath, though. And it'll be safe, for now. You won't have to worry about being hur–"

"Don't, Malfoy," she interrupts him harshly, her voice clogged with tears. "Please don't."

"Then you have to _move_," he begs her, tugging at her hand as she refuses to walk, her legs feeling stiff and numb, the insides traced disgusting with his cum. She can't seem to take another step; everything hurts and she is filthy and disgusting and violated and his hand is hot and sweaty around hers, and she wants to _scream_. She wants to just disappear. Cease to exist.

"I can't," she whispers to the floor, wiping blood-stained saliva from her lower lip. Malfoy makes a sound that is somehow frustrated, frightened, and urgent all at once, and pulls at her again, yanking Hermione a step or two down the hall. She feels stupidly like a horse, balking in sheer, stubborn terror and confusion.

"_Please_. Granger. You have to. Just keep it together. Just until we get to my room. But I can't…if we're seen and I'm being n-nice to you…I can't. They expect me to _hurt_ you." Malfoy's voice wobbles and his fingers spasm around Hermione's; she looks up at him through her hair to see his features crumpled with sick horror as he begs her to move.

"Please. I – I don't want to hurt you again," he begs her like a confession, and Hermione's stomach lurches at the pitiful desperation in his pleas. She stares at him for a long, hard moment, her heart striking quick in her chest, and his breath ragged little noises, his features written in desperation and blood. She takes a step, like a dam breaking, and Malfoy shudders out a sigh of relief, falling in beside her and just a little ahead, leading her as quickly as she will stumble. She looks down at her bare feet padded limping on the cold stones

"I'm sor–" he begins as they turn a corner, and he is shaking and shocky and his chin is trembling and his eyes are shining wet as he glances down at her – brimming with tears he blinks back and rimmed around red and swollen.

"_Malfoy_." Hermione doesn't know if she can handle an apology, and she doesn't know if he can handle apologising. Besides, the small, small part of her brain that is still thinking clearly doesn't want him to apologise for doing what he had to do keep her alive. And that is a thought that threatens to rip her apart – she wants to be able to just _hate _him, the one who did this to her, and she _can't_ because he was a victim too. It is all too much for her – for both of them.

"–ry…" Malfoy finishes anyway – as if he couldn't help himself, as if he had to say it for the sake of his sanity, and Hermione clenches her jaw, and bites back her hysteria and blind rage. It is not his fault, she tells herself, over and over. He is sorry because he didn't want to either, because he didn't want to hurt her; she understands that in her head, but it doesn't change how she feels. They go the rest of the way through the corridors in a taut, strained silence, his hand snugged hard around hers, his shirt warm around her shoulders.

* * *

Hermione hits him, when the door to his bedroom swings shut behind them with a heavy click – Malfoy turns to face her with his mouth just opening to speak, and before he can say a word she slaps him in the face as hard as she can. She doesn't mean to, doesn't think about it…it just happens. Malfoy's head snaps to the side and he sucks in a sharp little breath and winces, but otherwise he is still. Her face crumples – he _raped_ her and she doesn't give a shit that he had no choice, he still did it, and – she…she is so angry and violated and _ashamed_. And if Hermione doesn't exorcise that pent up emotion she feels like she will tear her own skin off. So she slaps Malfoy again, harder, and he still does nothing in response and she _screams_ wordlessly at him, fists bunched up in rage.

She slams both her fists into his chest, and Malfoy rocks on his feet, stumbling back into the door with a pained grunt – but still he does nothing to stop her, nothing to protect himself. Hermione stares up into his bloodied face, wanting to hiss expressions of hatred and loathing at him, wanting to so badly to blame him, to fling all her pain and hatred and rage at him. But the words die on her tongue, and her anger toward him withers to _nothing_ in a moment. Malfoy's eyes are bleak. She lets her fists fall limply to her sides and sucks in a breath, looking away from him because it hurts to see that he hurts too.

They stand there silently for a moment, awkward and hollow, and Hermione almost wants to apologise for hitting Malfoy but the words won't come. So she just stands – a clockwork toy that has wound down. She doesn't know what to do, so she does nothing at all. She is frozen by trauma and indecision, her brain numbed and lost, and heart _hurting_, and it is so, so awful.

"What do you need?" Malfoy breaks the silence at last, straightening and pushing away from the door. Her handprints still stand livid on his cheek. His eyes are dreadfully, horribly ashamed. "What do you want?"

Hermione stares blindly at his bare, pale chest as she turns the questions around and around in her head. He gave her a choice. She has a _choice_. It feels nearly alien after having been given none this past week or more, but also so, so good. She is so grateful to him for giving it to her, instead of just assuming.

"A - a bath," she says in something that is nearly a whisper; cracked and unsure. "You said you...have a bath?"

"Yes. Yeah, I do. You...want one, then?" Malfoy asks stupid and just as uncertain as her, all wide, bleak grey eyes and face that is half masked by dried blood. She nods, her lips wobbling on an attempt to smile that fails miserably.

"Yes. Please."

He moves - edging past her very cautiously as if to show he is not a threat - without a word, limping across the room. Hermione turns to watch him, tugging his shirt closed around her again and wincing at the pain as her bruised breasts jostle. He disappears through a door at the end of the room, and a moment later she hears the sound of water running.

She hugs herself tightly and takes a faltering step forward, looking around Malfoy's room, trying to ignore the feel of the sticky residue between her thighs. Trying not to remember every detail of what the cum on her thighs is the result of, and partially succeeding. She focuses on her surroundings.

The room is large, but not exactly spacious. Curtained windows are set down the right wall, the large four-poster bed against the left wall, facing the windows. The floor is covered in large, antique carpets, the walls in silver and dark green striped wallpaper. There is a small breakfast table and two chairs by one window, a bookcase and an armchair in a corner, all the furniture gleamingly polished dark wood. It is nearly like a Muggle studio apartment, Hermione thinks dully as she hobbles across it toward the bathroom, except for the lack of a kitchen.

Malfoy is bent over the basin as the bath runs beside him, scrubbing at his face and hands with a hand towel, distress crossing and twisting his features as the towel comes away dark brownish-red. He drops the hand towel and splashes water over his face, scraping at the dried blood coating the left side of his face, using his nails to do it. Hermione stands in the doorway quietly and unnoticed as he does it, holding his shirt closed around her and leaning frail against the doorframe. He could use a _scourgify_ to clean his face, she thinks, but instead he is scouring his skin until it is rubbed raw, bringing painful colour to his ashen complexion, a frantic urgency in his movements.

His face is mostly clean before the bath finishes filling, and he wrenches off the bath taps, and then the basin taps, swiping his face roughly one last time with a clean towel that he tosses to the floor. He sags forward and hangs his head, hands gripping the edge of the basin and breath coming in ragged gasps, naked shoulders heaving. He straightens to stare at himself in the mirror – miserable and hollow – the muscles in his back sliding beneath the skin as he moves, all shifting shadows and light-struck skin by the oil lamps burning smokeless at the walls. He stares at himself, and then his eyes catch on Hermione's figure reflected in the mirror, and he flinches with fright.

"_Shit._" He takes a shaky breath and turns to face her – but his eyes fix on the floor by her feet rather than her eyes. His hands flex and clench at his sides. "I didn't hear you come in," he stumbles out weakly.

"I-is the bath ready?" she asks, staring at the deep porcelain tub, filled near to the brim with clean water that the steam is coiling and wisping off like fog, or blurring ribbons of smoke. Her eyes are _greedy_ on it, and it is all she can think of; to get this _filth_ off her and try to feel clean again. Malfoy nods, awkward, and as if she is just a houseguest, shows her where all the necessities are, before awkwardly edging past her out the door. Hermione shuts it quietly behind him, leaning her forehead against the wood of the door for a moment and letting out a shudder of relief as the key turns in the lock with the sound of dull metal, the tumblers falling.

The water is scalding hot and that is what Hermione wants; even though it hurts in its own way, it feels cleansing. It reaches to her shoulders when she sits, cradling her as she sinks beneath it, drifting under with her hair trailing round her like seaweed. It is serene and peaceful under the heavy, comforting water, and she feels _safe_, warmth and calm suffusing her. It eases the pain, just a little. It is a reprieve, a soothing balm, a moment in a place of sanctuary, with her eyes shut and bubbles of air tickling out her nostrils, every inch of her surrounded by gentle, clean heat.

When she resurfaces for air, Hermione can hear a rough, faint sound carrying in through the crack beneath the door on a cool draught from the bedroom. It takes a moment with her forehead furrowed to recognise the barely audible noise, and when she does her hands curl into fists and she feels cold for a moment despite the heat she soaks in. It is the sound of Malfoy crying, muffled and rough; hitching, dry, sobs. She listens for a moment, sitting motionless in the water, the tips of her bedraggled wet hair dragging across the surface, an insistent stinging pain between her legs where the man who cries in the room outside _hurt_ her, against both of their wills. She shuts her eyes.

She doesn't know what to feel.

Hermione runs the bath once again before she is done, because once she has cleaned herself – gingerly and with tears streaking her cheeks – and catalogued her many hurts, the water is tinted dirty pinkish-grey. She rinses the dirty water off her body in a shallower bath, relishing the fresh, hot water again, and wraps herself in a massive towel that hides the bruises quilted in patchwork over her torso and thighs. The the ones on her arms, face, tops of her breasts, and the rest of her legs are still painfully visible, though. She looks haggard, face swollen to the point where she is barely recognisable. She stares and stares, hair stringing around her face in dark tangles, and she can't find a connection to herself; she looks like a stranger in the mirror. A brutalised, hollowed out stranger. There is a bruise potion on the bathroom counter that she swallows, the taste bitter on her tongue.

There are no clothes to be found when Hermione automatically turns to put them on, and a little sob chokes out of her throat. Malfoy is sitting on the edge of his bed when she emerges, still in just his trousers – he needs to wash too, she supposes dully – his head sunk in his hands, fingers dragging at fistfuls of his own hair. He looks up when she clears her throat, and his hair is sticking up every which way, and there are tear tracks down his cheeks that he doesn't even try to hide. Her heart suddenly aches. He looks so young and so hurt, the stony mask he puts on in front of the other Death Eaters nowhere to be seen and self-loathing digging under his skin.

"Clothes," Malfoy says in a rasping, tear-stuffy voice before she can, as his eyes sweep over her and he realises. He gets up fast and starts digging through drawers, sniffing and wiping at his cheeks with the back of his wrist. He is raw and unhidden, completely without pretence, and it feels wrong to see him like this, but oddly comforting too. "Shit, I'm sorry."

She stares glazed and unfocused in his direction, numbness setting again as the heat of the bath evaporates off her. Her tone is dull and vague. "It's okay, Malfoy."

His fist slams against the front of the dresser with a _bang_ that makes her gasp and flinch back. "_No_, no it's fucking _not_ okay," he snarls and then catches himself when he sees her cringing out of the corner of his eye. His anger melts away. "It's not okay, Granger. Don't say it is. Please. That – that wasn't fucking _okay._"

He gives her a bundle of soft cotton that is a too-large tee-shirt, and satin boxer shorts. "It's all I have that will fit you." A pause, his eyes drawn to the bruised, rounded tops of her breasts above her towel. "Do you need me to heal anything? I – I'm not brilliant at healing magic, but I can try."

She nods; tossing the clothes he has given her on the bed beside them, and lets the towel drop. He wrenches in a breath and averts his eyes. "You've seen it before, Malfoy," she tells him, angry through split lips, and he hisses and shakes his head, still refusing to look. "You f-f-fu…ra-…_hurt _me, Malfoy. Now you're afraid to look at what you did? Everyone already saw me. _Everyone_, you included. There's no point in me trying to pretend any kind of _modesty_, or _privacy_, because I – I –"

"Don't," he tells her fiercely as he looks at her finally, but just her face, his gaze boring pale and sharp into hers. "Don't, Granger… I – please don't do this…this…whatever the fuck it is. _Please_. It's not going to help anything. It's not…" He grabs the tee-shirt up off the bed, and gently but firmly tugs it on over Hermione's head, nudging her shoulder with one hand and raising an eyebrow, encouraging her to put it the rest of the way on. She just stands there blinking, feeling so _much _that it overwhelms her; in shock and concussed and hurting, she is half catatonic. Malfoy helps her, like he is dressing a child, his jaw ratcheted tight and his eyes never lingering on anything but her face. And she lets him, his hands so gentle and his eyes so terribly sad, and she feels the tears rise and rise inside her chest.

She starts to cry halfway through his fumbling attempts at healing her hurts, as they sit on the edge of the bed and he traces his wand tip over the bite mark on her breast where _he _broke the skin trying to prove to the Death Eaters that he is still loyal. That he wants Hermione for reasons that they all approve of. He lets the tee-shirt fall back down to cover her, and turns away sharply as the tears leak from her in a rush. Her breath hitches in and out and her cheeks sheet with wetness, as she feels the utter, desperate misery of the moment. He plants his feet on the floor and leans forward, head burying in his hands, the lines of his body taut with a furious, shaking tension.

"I'm sorry." Malfoy's voice is muffled and wretched.

Hermione stares down at her hands, knotting together in her lap, and swallows hard through her tears, which keep falling like rain. It is so _stupid _that the difference between his gentleness now and his cruelty then is the thing that makes her cry. It makes her _angry_, it makes her feel _weak._ "I – _good_. You – you _should _be. But…" And it is hard to say but she _wants _to say it; it feels right. "But it isn't your fault."

"I'm still the one that did it," he says choked, and he _is_, and that _does_ matter in its own way, but the r– what happened, wasn't his _fault._ Hermione tells him so again, in a small, cracked voice, and isn't sure that distinction means as much to him as it does to her.

It takes some time before she stops crying, and when she does Malfoy finishes healing her as best he can, his mouth a flat line and his eyes caught full with guilt. When he has finished he asks her if she wants anything else, and when she shakes her head mutely he tells her she can have the bed, if she wants to sleep. He will sleep in the armchair, or on the floor. She nods, pathetically grateful for somewhere comfortable and _safe_ to sleep, and curls up under the covers of Malfoy's huge bed, watching with slitted eyes as he disappears into the bathroom. The door swings shut, leaving the bedroom dimmed, the oil lamps burning low – a beam of brighter light sliding out from beneath the bathroom door.

There is silence for a long moment, and then Hermione stifles a squeak and jolts in fright as the sound of glass smashing echoes from the bathroom, followed by Malfoy swearing loudly. Another thud, the tinkling of shards of what she _knows _must be the mirror above the basin. More swearing, vicious and furious and impotent, and several more thuds. She makes herself smaller in the bed even though he knows that she is in no danger from him; instinctively cringing, making a ball, her eyes wide on his shadow blotting out part of the light streaming under the door, moving back and forth, pausing occasionally. He says something again, a slew of muffled words; she doesn't understand them, but she knows the tone, broken and _angry_.

Something thuds heavy back against the door, and then slides down – the light is blocked as - she guesses - Malfoy sits down slumped down against the door. She can picture him, whether she wants to or not. She hugs herself, smelling him on the soft tee-shirt, and it is not unpleasant as she had thought it might be, but makes her think of safety and an aching sadness at once. It is a long time before his shadow moves again, flickering out of sight before the long, stretched silence is broken by the rush of water into the porcelain bathtub.

Hermione lies there under the heavy blankets and listens to the sound of running water, her heart a crumpled little ball in her chest, her body aching like a pulse, throbbing and rushing.

* * *

**Author's Note:** So…I'm so nervous about this chapter; did it turn out all right? Did it give you all the feels of sympathy for them? Did it work in a non-gratuitous way, or did it ruin all chances of a relationship eventually happening between them, in your opinion?

Please tell me, I'm on tenterhooks here! ::wails::

Just one last chapter planned, at this point…


	3. Part Three

**Author's Note: **I'm so happy and pleased that overall you wonderful readers seem to think I'm doing an all right job of this! Thank you so much for leaving your feedback; I appreciate it so much!

The responses I've been getting have been enough to make me want to not rush the story, so this won't be the last chapter. I'm not sure how long it will be yet (probably a handful more chapters,) but the premise/main focus is still the same: "Can Hermione and Draco have a non-squicky relationship after he has raped her under duress?" Obviously for some of you the answer will always be 'no', and I respect that as reasonable, but for those of you who think 'maybe'...let me try to convince you (and myself) to a 'yes, sometimes.' :)

Lighter material this chapter, but still rather dark I suppose. Enjoy!

* * *

**Part Three**

"You have to eat _something_," he says in half-angry frustration, standing there before her in dark grey oxford shirt, black vest, and dress trousers, waiting with anxious eyes and tense shoulders. Hermione huddles smaller on the corner armchair she has been in since she woke screaming at four am, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. She ducks her head to stare at the floor just to the right of Malfoy, and shakes it, hair falling forward like a veil. The soup and toast he brought up on a silver tray sit sadly untouched on the breakfast table across the room, along with a large pot of tea. She isn't hungry. She has spent the past three days not being hungry, nothing passing her lips except water and the contraceptive potion Malfoy brewed for her, and now, on the fourth day, he is…something more than just worried.

"Granger...you _have_ to." He grind the words out, and Hermione shuts her eyes and rests her forehead against her knees, breathing hot and slow into the safe dark space between her folded up legs and her body.

"I'm not hungry," she tells the warm darkness, hugging her bare legs tighter. If she stays very still and very small, it is…easier. Easier to pretend to be elsewhere, anywhere but _here_, trapped in Voldemort's seat of power. Malfoy tried to go out to the drop point again yesterday, and was sent back, he told her. Not allowed out; under watch, a consequence of his deceit. She wonders if he is telling the truth, sometimes, in her darker moments, when everything seems hopeless and desperate, as if the end has come for her and she just hasn't realised it yet. Just hasn't lain down and died.

"If you don't eat, you'll die," he snaps then, and Hermione peeks up at him, nervous and alert; he is flushed with his anger and haggard from exhaustion, his fists bunching at his sides. Her eyes linger on his fists with instinctive hints of fear stirring and curling sick in her belly; he hasn't laid a finger on her except to deal with her injuries since it happened, but a primal part of her must _remember_. She flinches when he moves too quickly around her, and when he displays anything but calm her heart becomes a stampede in her chest, and fear-sweat chills her skin. Malfoy follows the line of her vision, and he makes a sharp, apologetic sound and his hands fly open. Splaying large and long-fingered, skinny, the knuckles on his right hand bruised and patterned with little nicks and cuts from when he had broken the bathroom mirror and never healed himself.

"You'll die if you don't eat," he says again, in a voice that is too-calm and too-soft, and vibrates with tension under the surface, hands fidgeting awkwardly at his sides – he is too aware of them now, Hermione thinks absently. She sighs and rests her temple against one knee, trying to ignore Malfoy; she feels dizzy and _gone_, as though she is floating away from everything. Partly the hunger and partly just how she feels now. "And then – then – what _happened_…what I _did_ to you will have been for – been for fucking _nothing_. For _nothing._" He loses his calm then, voice breaking rough, and his fingers spidering wide at his sides as he tries to stop himself making fists. "_Granger, please._"

"I'm sure it was so terrible for you," she says quiet and bitter, staring absently off across the room, pain swelling and cracking against her ribs. Her breath snaps in, voice turns _vicious._ "So awful for you, how you had to hit me and hurt me and – and stick your dick in me and –"

"_Don't_." The word rips furious from Malfoy's throat as his shoes shift on the floor, and she presses her lips together and lifts her head to watch him as he takes two stumbling steps back. He is bloodless-pale and somehow fragile in his anger, shoulders hunched a little and his eyes wide and written with sick guilt. "It _was_," he hisses, fists clenching again, the words wobbling and shaking and spilling from his lips. "It fucking _was_ awful and don't you _dare _- don't you _dare_ act like it was fun for me. I – I – yeah it was so much fucking worse for you, Granger, I _realise _that, I'm not an arsehole, but I – I wasn't exactly having a fucking good – good time. I…"

He turns away fast, his head bowing and his hands sliding quick through his hair, self-soothing and panicky, his breath coming in ragged and loud in the silence. And then he just walks away with stiff, sharp steps, without a word; across the bedroom and out the door. He shuts it with a carefulness that makes it clear he wanted to slam it, and she hears it lock behind him. She can still use the key that dangles from a small chain by the door to get out – she knows; she has tried before. Malfoy locking it merely keeps her safe from the other occupants of the mansion.

The air shudders out of her.

Cruel; what she said was just plain _cruel_, and Hermione wishes now, staring at the closed door from her huddle on the armchair, that she could take it back. But she can't. And she cannot deny that it felt so good to get it out. She has threads of anger mixed in with her fear and listlessness, which spark up now and then like a struck match, and when she doesn't exorcise the anger it _burns_ her. She unfolds from the chair and gets up with a wince, dizzied and weak from fasting, her muscles feeling sore. Thanks to the bruise potions and Malfoy's rudimentary healing skills her injuries are nearly gone, but sitting cramped in one place for so long leaves her body stiff.

But it feels safest there – the darkest corner of the room when the reading lamp is turned off, the armchair like a fortress in her imagination. An illusion of protection; a nest to retreat to. Where she sits, and sits, and sits, and lets the day drift past her without truly touching her, only moving to go pee and gulp down water from the bathroom hand basin. She does that now, wondering where Malfoy has gone, and when he will be back. Hoping he will be all right and unharmed, both because she hurt him, and because he is all that is keeping her safe right now.

She washes her hands with soap that smells like woody spices and vanilla, and finger combs her straggling hair. Malfoy hasn't repaired the mirror above the basin, and Hermione is glad of that. She doesn't want to see herself; because she looks awful, because it hurts, because she doesn't recognise the look in her own eyes. She hates seeing a stranger staring back at her. Filling her cupped hands with water, Hermione drinks until the hunger pangs in her stomach have quieted a little. She doesn't know why she doesn't want to eat. She just…doesn't want to, so she doesn't. It is one of the few things she _can_ control, so maybe that is why.

The room is still empty and silent when Hermione emerges from the bathroom, and she sighs softly, shoulders sagging with both relief and disappointment mixed. She does what she has done the past few days while Malfoy is gone serving Voldemort or whatever he does; sits and tries to read, to sleep, to think of a way out, to lose herself in happy memories – to do anything but sit and dwell on the trauma and fear that make a toxic stew in her stomach. The worst thing is not what _has_ happened, she thinks, as she sits in the armchair with the book she has been trying and failing to read for the past half-hour.

It is not the women dying in the dungeons, or the rape and the beatings, although both those things haunt her nightmares. But those aren't what crawl under her skin and make her itch and panic and curl up on the armchair during the day, feeling like being very, very still is the only way she can hold herself together. Those things are _over_ now; there is nothing Hermione can do to save the women, and Malfoy will not hurt her again – it was Voldemort's fault, Malfoy didn't want to hurt her, it was their only option, and it saved her life, she tells herself – and knowing that helps her cope with it, most of the time. She feels horrified and violated, but knowing that she _and_ Malfoy were both as unwilling makes it…easier to bear.

What Hermione is finding it hardest to cope with, is the fear that _she will never get out of here alive_.

That Malfoy won't be able to get her out, that he'll be found out as a traitor, that he won't be able to protect her anymore, that the Order won't come to rescue her, that Voldemort will take her away from Malfoy and do Merlin knows what with her, that she will be trapped in Malfoy's room forever. So many. So many things to be afraid of.

Her fears of the future prey on Hermione's mind without end; a constant litany of the same terrible thoughts over and over, mixed in with memories and nightmares. So she tries to distract herself, and think of – _do_ – other things. And she always fails, as she does again now, sitting on the armchair with the book unread, picturing her death over and over in a multitude of different ways, wondering in the back of her mind if Malfoy will come back or if he has been found out as a traitor, even now.

When Malfoy finally does return, hours later, he carries a tray that is laden with food, and moves with an odd stiffness to the table. He doesn't look at Hermione, but she glues her eyes on him, filled with relief that he is back and trying to work up the courage and momentum to _say_ something. He vanishes the old tray – the food still untouched – and sets down the new one, unloading the plates. Roast meats, crispy roast potatoes, an array of other vegetables, and a decanter of pumpkin juice. Hermione's stomach growls shockingly loud and he looks up and across the room at her, eyes falling on her in her dark corner.

"Oh my god!" Hermione's eyes spring wide and she covers her mouth to stifle her gasp as she stares at him full of shocked concern; Malfoy sports brand new colourful bruises. One sweeps purple-red from atop the swollen bridge of his nose down underneath each eye, there are more spreading on his right cheekbone and left jaw, there is a fresh split in his left eyebrow that is red raw but not bleeding, and his mouth is puffy, lips swollen, bruises around the left of it. He looks a mess.

"What…what happened?" She knows that whatever has happened can't be too bad, considering he seems more concerned with dinner than anything else. But she worries anyway, nerves jangling. It could be a sign of things to come.

"Come and eat, Granger," he says, voice tired and a little thick, dabbing gingerly at his swollen mouth with the side of his thumb, and checking it for blood. Hermione frowns, annoyed at having her question ignored, her worry picking up. She has no intention of eating, but she gets up anyway. Malfoy's tee-shirt falls to just below her bum as she stands, his boxer shorts reaching mid-thigh, the satin slipping and sliding together as she approaches him. It feels strange to be walking _toward_ Malfoy instead of avoiding him as she has the past couple of days, and from the little half-step he slides back with a wince, it doesn't feel natural to him either.

She stops a few paces away from him, hugging her arms loosely around her waist in a defensive gesture she isn't really even aware of. She'd had vague plans of demanding to know what had happened, but now she just feels exposed and vulnerable, and wishes she had stayed in her corner. Only…his _face. _Malfoy raises his unhurt eyebrow at her, maybe trying for casual and unconcerned, but this up close he just looks wrecked. She winces in sympathy for him, eyes running over each purple-red, darkening bruise, the swollen knots and puffy places on his face that make him look not quite right.

Malfoy's eyes are grey like river stones; wet-dark and worn smooth, unreadable. They seem out of place in the bruises and swellings, which change the angles and lines of his face and make her want to play spot the difference with the shape of his features.

"Are you all right, Granger?" he asks, half-worry, half-painful amusement, and then hisses in self-censure as he realises the obvious a second too late. "Sorry, I just mean…you look…you're staring," he finishes weakly, rubbing at his mouth again as though it bothers him – and it no doubt does, Hermione thinks, as swollen and tenderised as it looks.

"I – I'm fine," she says hesitantly, forcing herself to drop her arms to her sides, where they hang awkwardly – she wishes she has back pockets to slip her fingers into. It feels strange to be half-dressed. It feels strange to talk as well; her voice is a little scratchy and sounds loud and echoing in her ears. She has said as little as possible the past few days, and besides, she feels so light-headed _everything_ seems a little wrong and off-balance. "Are _you _all right, Malfoy?"

"It doesn't matter." He drops his hand from his mouth and backs away with marionette-awkward steps, sitting down at the table and gesturing for her to take the other chair. She edges closer. The food – piled on two large platters in the middle of the table – smells delicious, and Malfoy takes generous helpings of everything for his own plate. It tempts her gnawing belly, but she's focused on why the man keeping her alive is noticeably and rather horribly battered.

"Aren't you…going to heal it?"

Malfoy shakes his head, fringe falling forward from its rough slick back, a few fine, nearly-white strands getting caught by the raw, weeping split at his brow. "No. It's a – well, not a punishment, _exactly_. But if I heal it I may end up just getting replacements. I'd rather not risk that."

"Does it concern…me, at all?" Hermione remains standing for now, tense and nervy, feeling herself like an animal that could startle at any second. The dark, faux-safety of the corner is stupidly appealing, although she can't help noticing the food, stomach cramping and mouth flooding with saliva

"No," he says smoothly – too smoothly, and she narrows her eyes at him, her pulse thwip-thwip-thwipping quicker and her chest feeling tighter. He's lying and Hermione _knows_ it. Fear tumbles and catches all the way down the bones of her spine, icy and jolting.

"Yes it _does_." She sounds reedy and thin in her fear, as though she can't seem to draw a proper breath. That would be because she _can't_, and she wonders vaguely if she's having a panic attack. Malfoy's mouth tightens and he looks down at his plate, picking up his knife and fork and sawing too-vigorously at a slice of beef. His knife squeals on the china, cool grey eyes flicking up to meet hers for a second, and his tone is firm and final as he looks back at his dinner plate.

"I sorted it, Granger. It's fine. There's no need to… Just drop it, all right?"

"Tell me, or I won't eat," she says then, stepping up to the table and resting her hand lightly on the back of the chair, not sitting down yet. It's a rather desperate bargaining attempt and she hates using it, but from the suddenly furious and _trapped_ look in Malfoy's pale eyes, she thinks it will work. But then his grip on his cutlery shifts, holding it hard and angry in his fisted hands.

"I swear to Merlin, Granger, that I will force-feed you if I have to," he growls warningly, and Hermione blanches; just the thought of being trapped and helpless while Malfoy holds her down and… Echoes of sharp, bloody, memory rise in her mind and her fingers cramp white-knuckled tight on the chair, her whole body goes tense, and she stares at him wide-eyed and frantic.

"_Don't._ You can't d-do that." She feels tears rise burning behind her eyes as panic slams through her. She begs him, trying not to remember, unthinking and frantic: "_Please._"

Malfoy is horror-struck. He swears harsh beneath his breath and makes a frustrated sound that she doesn't think is directed at her. "_Fuck_. I didn't mean that. I didn't mean it. All right? I want you to fucking well _eat something_, but I won't make…you're not a prisoner." He pushes his fringe off his forehead with one hand, fingers shoving through his white-blonde hair, and his eyes lock to hers. He stares up at her steadily, and earnest. "You don't have to be afraid I'm going to hurt you…a-again." It sounds like the last word is _dragged_ out of him, and his eyes slide from hers to the table, shame weighing his shoulders and making his mouth turn down a little.

She swallows hard. "If you won't tell me about something that relates to me just because you don't feel like it, then I may as well be your prisoner."

A pause, before a resumption of anger in Malfoy's face and voice. "Fine then," he says, with dull resentment at having his hand forced. When he looks up at Hermione her stomach flips with fear-sympathy-sadness at the bleakness in Malfoy's eyes as he gives in to her. "_Fine_. If you must know, Goyle and Crabbe Senior caught me trying to slip out to the drop point again. They stopped me, and in the course of escorting me back inside mentioned that they wanted to take a turn at you," he says bluntly, his tone still flat and dull. "I told them that they could go fuck each other because they wouldn't be laying a finger on you, and unsurprisingly, they didn't take to that well."

A beat as Hermione processes that, her stomach tying in sick knots; because she is in very real danger, because Malfoy was beaten for protecting her, because after what she said to him this morning he had still risked everything try to get her out again. She bites her tongue, trying to be calm and stay where she is, clutching the chair like a lifeline. The possibility that the other Death Eaters would be so bloody eager to hurt her hadn't occurred to her before now. She had thought that being considered Malfoy's - like some kind of possession - would make her untouchable.

Apparently not.

"…Oh. Oh, I…"

"They disarmed me _before_ they told me what they wanted to do with you, of course – used an _expelliarmus_ when I wasn't expecting it, bloody backstabbing fucks," he tells her, as if disgusted with himself for being caught off-guard. "And then when I told them I wouldn't let them…have you, they took their displeasure out on me, as I said. I'm just lucky that the two _idiots_ didn't use magic, and didn't kill me accidentally either." He sighs, frustrated and short, shoving his food aimlessly about his plate as he goes on. Hermione finds herself sitting down at the table, hands knotted up in her lap, twining over each other nervously as she listens.

"Wandless, there's only so much I can do against those two fuckers. They're built like their sons." He grimaces. "When I tried to warn them off by telling them the Dark Lord wouldn't like two worthless gits putting one of his most promising servants out of action, they said the Dark Lord had removed his protection, and continued merrily kicking the shit out of me." There's a dry flippancy to Malfoy as he lays down his cutlery, unconsciously holding his side with one hand as he shifts in his seat and runs two fingers gently over the bruise on his cheekbone.

Hermione cringes with empathy as she remembers starkly the assault in the cells – and tries very hard not to remember the brutality that Malfoy had inflicted on her before he'd raped her. That wasn't quite the same, Hermione thinks reluctantly. He hadn't had a choice, she reminds herself. Except, a small part of her can't help but feel there is some justice in the fact that just four days later _he_ has been beaten himself. Mostly, though, she just feels _sorry_ for Malfoy.

But her first focus is the rather worrying thing that he said at the end there. "What...what does that mean? About Voldemort…removing his protection?"

"It means there is a great deal of in-fighting that I _was_ exempt from, from which I am no longer. I'll have to watch my back far more carefully." Malfoy seems mostly unconcerned – unlike her.

Being that she can't do anything about it and all it does is make her feel panicky and furious at her helplessness, Hermione almost wishes that he hadn't told her. Almost. But she is glad she knows, in the end. She stares at his grey eyes, swept beneath by purpling bruises, and wonders who on earth he is, the man who sits before her. Wonders why he is doing this. He isn't the same arrogant, self-absorbed, cruel boy she knew at school; he is someone else entirely now. He is someone who risks torture and death to do the right thing.

"I'm sorry," she says very quietly. "About you – you getting hurt, and…about what I said earlier."

Malfoy shrugs, but his bruised features seem to soften a little, and the less injured side of his mouth twitches up into something that almost seems to be a smile. "Don't be sorry, Granger. Just…eat."

* * *

She wakes in the moonlit dark to panic and a dark shape looming over the bed, cautiously shaking her shoulder as a familiar, low voice calls her name rough with sleep. "– _down_, Granger. It's just a dream. _Fuck, Granger_…"

Blurred with nightmares and caught in a maelstrom of sobs, Hermione flails to push back the person touching her at first, gasping and choking, whooping for air. "_No!_" She scrambles back with frantic pushes of her feet against the bed, propelling herself across it away from the figure beside the bed, still half-asleep and snared in her nightmares. Her heart pounds like a hammer in her chest, and she is clammy and cold with sweat as she tries to drag herself up out of the confusing thick clog of sleep.

"No," she says again, stronger now but still frantic and wrenched from her, pressing her back hard into the wall as if she can sink through it. Her hands are up, as if to ward off an attacker. _Voldemort's inhuman, gleeful smile. The men burning the bodies of prisoners. Malfoy's hand down her knickers. Being held down as the Snatchers drag at her jeans and thrust their tongues in her mouth_. Hermione sobs and squeezes her eyes tight shut; trying to find reality in the silvered dark. "_No_."

"Granger – Granger, it's okay." His voice, gentle but urgent, and her eyes snap up to him, recognising him at last; Malfoy. Pale eyes and hair that snare the moonlight, bruises shockingly dark on his face. His tongue flicks out to wet his battered lips. "It's okay."

The last of her dream snags and claws at Hermione as she sucks in a steadying breath and pulls her knees up, buries her face in her hands. _Malfoy's body heavy on her bloodied, battered one, a harsh pain radiating through her insides as he thrusts rough into her, again and again, all hard, sharp desperation._ God. She hugs around her middle tightly and folds forward over the bars of her arms, staring at her bare feet atop the twisted blankets. She gulps as her stomach twists, and sour bile rises acrid in the back of her throat.

Malfoy's presence is barely reassuring, considering the content of Hermione's nightmares.

"I feel sick," she chokes out, gulping hard and breathing harder, trying to centre herself in the now and banish the nightmare-memories. "I feel…"

Malfoy backs away, turning and making for the corner where he sleeps on a transfigured mattress, and Hermione stares blindly after him. All she can see are the soft sheaves of his white-blonde hair shining in the moonlight, and flashes of pale shoulders, glimpses of the lean lines of his back. He sinks to his knees – scooping up his wand – and whispers a charm. The lamps at the walls flare into life, before settling low and bathing the room in a dull orange-gold glow, and she can see him properly then. It's suddenly easier to breathe. He is less threatening in the soft light; so unlike her fear-filled memories of him.

Malfoy is shirtless, in low-slung pyjama trousers knotted with a drawstring, and his torso is nearly as bruised as hers was several days ago. It is covered in dark flowers of purples, blues, and red-blacks, and Hermione is drawn out of the last vestiges of dazed sleep by a pained sympathy. Her breath wrenches in, her gaze sweeping over the lean angles of him. Silver ridges of scar tissue catch both the lamplight and her eyes; old scars striped diagonal across his chest and abdomen, half-buried by all the vivid bruising, along with a sprinkle of other odd, uneven scars. She stares; mapping the old wounds and fresh injuries that crisscross Malfoy's pale skin is a good distraction from the memory-thoughts looping harsh and frantic through her head. There are a surprising number of scars for someone his age, even given the war.

Malfoy sees her staring as he drops his wand back down by his pillow and stands again with a wince, muscles shifting and sliding under his skin as he straightens. He presses a hand to a deep bruise at the right of his abdomen as he rolls his shoulders back, and eyes her cautiously. "Granger?"

She blinks and looks away, her arms loosening their death grip on her middle, an exhale sinking out of her. She feels small and tense. "I'm – I'm all right now, I think." She knows she doesn't sound it.

The nightmare is fading to insubstantial tatters, as she watches Malfoy cross to a dresser and dig a white tee shirt out of a drawer, but she is still all adrenaline-charged nerves. "You were talking in your sleep," Malfoy says in a tight, strained voice as he yanks the tee shirt on over his head. Hermione remembers; snippets and drifts. His eyes flick over to her, wary, guilt written in the way he holds his mouth and ducks his face a little.

_Please, Malfoy, don't. Please._

Yes, she remembers. He swallows hard, staring at the floor, his hair an unruly mess and his hands fidgeting at his sides. "Do you want me to go?"

"What?" His question comes from nowhere, and Hermione doesn't understand why he asks it. She slides back down the bed, off her frightened huddle on the pillow against the wall. The sheets are cool and crisp on her bare legs. "Why?" She doesn't like it that the thought of Malfoy leaving her alone scares her; she shouldn't want to cling to him for comfort. But the fact is, she is no longer protected by merely belonging to Malfoy, and while she is relatively safe locked and warded in here without him, she is even safer _with_ him. And she doesn't know why he would think he should leave.

"Because…I don't want to remind you of…if you've just dreamt about it…I'd understand if you don't want to be near me. If you don't feel safe with me…" Malfoy is ineloquent, awkward and stilted, a hot flush colouring the unbruised parts of his cheeks. _Oh_, she thinks; that would make sense, wouldn't it, but now that she is fully awake again and can distinguish between dream and reality –

"No. You can stay." Her hands twist up in the bedding, yanking it up over her lap, a heavy weight on her legs as she stares at Malfoy's mouth. The damage to it draws her attention, lips swollen and bruised around the corner, and it is easier to look at than his eyes right now, and not just because he has them cast down toward the floor. "I – I would rather you stayed."

"You're sure?" He licks his lower lip – begins to worry it in a moment of forgetfulness, before wincing and releasing it fast.

"It was just a dream, Malfoy."

His reddened mouth tightens a little, and she flicks her eyes up to meet his. He is looking at her as though she is a particularly stupid child, telling lies that everyone sees through. Maybe she is. "Granger." Tiredly, his eyes weary and the side of his thumb dabbing tentatively at his mouth, as though he thinks it is bleeding. He has been doing that all evening. "Don't…"

"Don't _what_, Malfoy?" Hermione is a little sharp; mouth pursing up as she glares at him. The food she ate earlier has given her new energy – she feels stronger and more grounded with something filling her stomach. Malfoy's eyebrow arches in surprise for a second, but the discomfort on his face remains.

"Don't try to – it wasn't just a fucking dream." His hands clench up at his sides for a moment, and Hermione bites down on the inside of her cheek, pulling her legs up to her chest and hugging them. It feels safe.

"No." Her voice is small and flat. "It wasn't."

"You were saying my name. You were scared. _Crying_."

"I'm not scared now," Hermione offers, voice still small, not sure why she's telling him this except that it's true, and also because she thinks that he hates himself for what he did. And as awful as it was, she doesn't think he should hate himself. It wasn't like he wanted to. It wasn't like he had a better choice.

"That's – that's not the point, Granger."

"Isn't it?" She eyes him, feeling oddly calm, her cheek resting against her knee and her eyes running over his bruised and battered features. "I think maybe it is."

"This morning you seemed…angry at me." He is uncertain and confused, shifting on his feet nervously. And yes, Hermione had been angry. She still is. But not at him, exactly. And intellectually she _knows_ that she can trust him, even if her body still flinches when he comes near. A yawn cracks her jaw, and she huffs a sigh, feeling oddly normal in her weariness.

"Just…stay. Please, Malfoy? I feel safer knowing I'm not alone, in this place," she admits, and watches his lips stutter apart as he hisses softly in surrender. She can see some of the guilt drain out of him as his shoulders relax beneath the white tee shirt, and he nods a silent assent.

He settles not back in his makeshift bed, but instead a chair at the table, with his wand and a book - leaving _her_ armchair free for her to retreat to if she wants. And every night so far that is what she's done when she's woken. Except tonight, Malfoy leaves a lamp burning to read by, slouched in a chair with his hair licked pale gold by the light, and Hermione stays in the bed a little longer. Curled up on her side with her slitted eyes fixed on Malfoy, who she thinks must feel her gaze but ignores it. He sits and reads, the crisp _shruk _of the pages turning at steady intervals almost lulling. Her eyes droop, the lids growing ever heavier, but she stares at Malfoy and his wand as long as she can.

She feels almost safe.

* * *

A day ticks by.

And another.

Another.

Another.

It is mind-numbing and soul-crushing, and yet somehow Hermione manages to begin to adjust within only several days. It is amazing what people can become accustomed to, she thinks from the pretended safety of her armchair. Although, what exactly 'accustomed' means is debateable, Hermione supposes. She is coping though; captivity is becoming her new normal. And it is becoming that far quicker than she is comfortable with, if she is honest. It scares her. How easily she has surrendered to this; but then what other choice does she have except get herself killed, and at this point that would help no one. So she just…survives, and the days tick by; excruciatingly slow and blurred together at once.

All the days are the same as the one before. Just the same. The banality of it almost begins to eclipse the constant fear that hovers with sharp claws just behind her back. She begins picking at her food again, and starts to gain back the weight she lost while in the dungeon, and fasting. She sits all day in her armchair and tries to read. Malfoy says that if he can regain Voldemort's faith in him, he'll be able to get to the drop point again and the Order will figure out a rescue plan. She accepts that, and stops dreaming up futile escape plans of her own, although it feels a little like defeat to do so. She watches out the windows sometimes when he is gone, and tries to see shapes in the clouds. When she can't focus on her book, or the clouds, or distract herself with a mindless hot bath, Hermione thinks of home.

Hermione thinks with an ache sharp in her chest of the small safehouse that she, Harry, Ron, and the rest of the Weasleys have been staying in for the past several months. Of dinners at the long table, and Harry kissing Ginny on the cheek. Of Ron laughing and teasing her, always balancing a knife-edge between flirtation and casual joking, and neither of them ever willing to cross the line. She had always thought he would be the one. But in the end, it was Malfoy, and it doesn't even count. She thinks of Teddy Lupin, so like his dead parents – she thinks of how sweet he is, how cuddly, always smiling. She thinks of her parents, and wonders like she always did at the safehouse, whether they are still alive; she hasn't asked Malfoy, although it's possible he might know. Because what if the answer is that they are dead?

She spends a lot of her time remembering; sunk in drifts and swells and currents of memory, sweet and sad and funny. It achieves nothing, but at least it eats away the hours until Malfoy's return each day.

Malfoy is gone all the day-lit hours, in Voldemort's service – demoted but still used, watched and tested constantly for signs of disloyalty. It will be difficult, to regain the privileges he once had, and Voldemort is nearly as cruel to the followers he is displeased with as he is to his enemies. Or so she gathers from what she sees, and from the little comments here and there that he lets slip, from his shaking hands, and the injuries he always returns bearing. They don't talk about it though, not really. They don't talk about how sometimes when he comes back there is still blood on his clothing, and sometimes it is his, but sometimes it is not, and _always_ he locks himself in the bathroom for a very long time afterward.

Hermione never mentions what she hears through the bathroom door; the first slew of muffled, angry curses, and the rough, quickly stifled sobs that follow, half-hidden beneath the sound of rushing water. Hermione has a feeling that the breakdown at the end of every day is old habit for him - a release - and the thought of it turns her stomach for more than one reason. She wonders how long Malfoy has been coming upstairs with blood staining his skin and his clothing. She wonders how long he has been going into his bathroom to try to wash the blood away, as if anything could wash out the blood of the innocent.

Six days into her stay in Malfoy's rooms he catches her staring at him from her dark corner as he locks the door behind him. He turns for the bathroom with a wince, limping over the floor with one foot dragging a little and the blood…the blood on his hands, coating them like crimson gloves. Her stomach is sick and so is her heart. Congealing, darkening blood coats Malfoy's skin sticky from fingertip to elbow, because Voldemort approves when his people revel in the blood and don't _scourgify_ it away immediately. She gulps and her hand comes up to cover her mouth, and he stares at her. Just _stares, _for a long, long moment.

"Your precious Potter sanctioned this," he says then, thickly, sounding as sickened as her, strain etched in fine lines and dark shadows around his grey eyes, the bit of fringe falling over his forehead marked by a faint streak of dark blood, another smear on his cheekbone. "This blood is on _his_ hands too. So if you're disgusted by me, then…then you're…he…" Malfoy can't even finish, swallowing hard and breathing short and fast, his eyes darting so intent over her face, as if he is peeling back the layers of her and digging into her brain. Hermione looks away from his needy, wounded eyes, her own slipping back down to his hands, which he holds stiffly at his sides. He looks like a doctor who's been forced into an emergency, last-ditch surgery attempt, and failed. Like a horror-movie monster.

She tries to say something – to tell him _what_ she doesn't know, because disgust _is_ clogging her insides like poison, and to know that Harry sanctions it, that Malfoy has to do it, it is _horrifying_ – but nothing comes out except his name. "Malfoy."

Their eyes lock. He waits, as she searches with dry lips for the right thing to say. The thing that…that is _right_. An odd, detached hysteria flails in the back of her head as she stares into the eyes of the man who was forced to violate her, forced to murder, forced to _torture_, all in the name of the Light. And how does he not hate them? How does he not hate himself? How does he not go mad? She stares at him with her mouth hovering open on the verge of words she cannot find, because all she can think about is how doing the right thing has damned him just as surely as doing the wrong thing would have. The person he has tortured or killed just now is no less dead, or hurt, because Malfoy was doing it for the Order, for the greater good.

She feels sick. So sick.

And Malfoy stands there with his eyes boring into hers, and he waits, and he waits for her to speak, and Hermione says nothing. There is nothing that she can say. Nothing that will erase the horror and make it okay, because it isn't, and it never will be. Hermione does not believe in the greater good. She closes her mouth, her eyes snapping from his to stare unfocused past his left ear. She sees enough, though. Malfoy's bloodied fists clench, and droplets slowly drip viscous and dark on the floor, and his mouth twists and his face twitches. He limps away, stiff and furious, and the bathroom door slams behind him hard enough to rattle all the pictures on the walls.

Hermione buries her face in her hands, and when she weeps, for the first time in days her tears aren't a flood of misery and self-pity running over her fingers. No; she thinks perhaps she is crying for the person whose blood coated Malfoy's hands. And maybe even for Malfoy himself. She is so angry. So angry and so sorry, at all of this; everything.

It has been eleven days since Hermione was captured.

She just wants to go home.

* * *

When the nightmares come, late in the night and she can't sleep, he sits at the table with a book and watches over her. Lamp lit and washing him in gold, he stares at a book with blurring eyes, his wand on the table in reach. Sometimes when she wakes in the morning, she sees him there still; slumped forward over the table, fingertips just touching his wand, because even after she falls asleep, she thinks he must stay awake, guarding against the nightmares. His eyes are always bruised around.

But they don't ever speak of it.

There are many things they don't speak of.

At first, at least.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Please feed me with nummy reviews :D


	4. Part Four

**Part Four**

Twenty-seven days go by since Hermione was first captured, by her count. They are all the exact same in essence since she left the dungeons, and they all drag by with deadening monotony. She no longer has the energy to be truly afraid, or hopeful, or homesick. She feels all these things constantly, but never with any real strength; they are simply the weary background noise to what her existence has become. It is hard to sustain any kind of intensity of feeling when there is no end to anything, when there is no brave escape to keep her going, no possibility of rescue to buoy her up. This is limbo, Hermione tells herself as she stares unseeingly down at the book in her lap. This is purgatory, and she despises it. She is _sick_ of it, of feeling nearly nothing but a hollowed out, aching emptiness. She wants to _scream_, to scream and rage and _tear things apart_, because beneath the emptiness that is drowning her, there is a deep wellspring of suppressed, desperate anger.

But Hermione doesn't scream. Instead she just curls her hands tightly together and squeezes until it hurts, the pain both a distraction and a relief. Hermione is rather certain that is not a healthy coping mechanism, and she really doesn't care. The clock on the wall by the door ticks quietly, and she watches the thin seconds hand spin around the clock face with excruciating slowness, the minute hand even slower. Time seems stretched thin like taffy here, and the more she watches the Merlin-damned clock, the slower it appears to move. She waits for Malfoy to return. And this is what her life has become. It is infuriating, that his return is a much anticipated _event_, but it is frightening being in his rooms without him, where any Death Eater could conceivably force their way in past the wards and locks if they were skilled enough. And…it is _lonely._

Malfoy is not good company – it isn't that he is rude, or awful, she just doesn't know what to _say_ to him – but he is still company. Silent company who never speaks of anything but the absolute necessities, but she likes to see him there. Once he has finished washing away the blood and filth of his work – metaphorical and actual – he emerges silently and his presence both eases and elevates the tension in the room. He settles into routine, Hermione notices, once the first week has passed. She isn't sure if it was a routine he had before, or if it is one that has come about thanks to her presence. The clock on the wall ticks toward 5 o'clock, and she watches it and thinks he will be back soon, and then the routine will begin.

The routine.

He comes out of the bathroom after washing, in a fresh shirt and trousers. His eyes skim and cast over her, before he moves to the – locked; she has tried to open it – cabinet that holds decanters of alcohol. He hesitates there, and then turns away, rubbing his hand over his eyes. Instead he moves to the row of windows that make up one wall, beyond which the sun lowers in the sky. Malfoy stands with his arms crossed over his chest and his shoulder leaning into one frame, head tilting tiredly to join it after a while, staring out into the bleak gardens below and the afternoon sky above. Hermione finds herself watching him; tall and lean, white-blonde hair going gold under the stain of afternoon sun creeping into the room, a statue that speaks of weariness and defeat, and an odd vulnerability. She would name him The Loyal Traitor, she decides with dry whimsy one day, as he turns back to the room with a face that is carved in expressions of self-loathing so deep it startles her.

And then he disapparates, and returns only several minutes later with an array of delicious foods, and she creeps from her huddle in her armchair to join him for a silent dinner. They watch each other as they eat. Eyes flicking and joining and breaking apart – guilt, worry, curiosity, and suspicion. They watch each other, in the end, more than they watch their food. But they don't speak, unless there is something that must be said.

_Pass the salt._

_May I have the gravy boat?_

_Did you get to the drop point today?_

_Do you need anything?_

And then she escapes back to her armchair and watches Malfoy pile the dirty dishes up, apparating to the kitchens and returning empty-handed usually, although several times now he has come back with an armful of linens – fresh bedsheets and pillowslips for the bed she sleeps in. He changes it using magic, while she watches surreptitiously from behind her book. And then he sits down at the table – after a glance at Hermione – and begins to read. Occasionally Malfoy sits at his desk before he picks up a book, and spends an hour writing a lengthy letter. Hermione doesn't ask who he is writing to, but she suspects it is his mother. She doesn't know who else he has to write to. When Malfoy is finished writing his letter he picks it up by one corner, and sets it alight with a flick of his wand, dropping it in a small rubbish bin by his desk and watching it burn away to nothing, his face expressionless. And then he dashes off what seems like just a quick note, and sets it aside to post the next day – she thinks it probably has to pass inspection by another Death Eater before being posted.

At any rate, they spend their evenings in what she could _almost_ call companionable silence, until 10 o'clock sharp, when Hermione takes a bath and crawls into bed. She is never really very tired, but she shuts her eyes and tries to sleep anyway – because there is nothing else to do, and because although she often wakes with nightmares, she craves the blissful nothingness of sleep that comes before the bad dreams. She doesn't know how late Malfoy usually stays up, but whenever she awakes from a nightmare, she sees him there. Lit softly in the lowered lamplight and sitting uncomfortable at the table; sometimes still reading despite the clock saying it is hours past midnight, sometimes blinking sleepily to wakefulness at her with worry printed in his hazy eyes, and sometimes fast asleep and snoring faintly, face smushed into the table and hand on his wand even in his sleep.

He looks so innocent, sleeping.

Rarely, Malfoy has to leave again in the evening, with his face set cold and hard – that blank, expressionless mask shaping his features. He never tells her when he will be back; she supposes he doesn't know himself. But when he returns his footsteps are heavy and weighted with more than just physical exhaustion, and she curls beneath the bedcovers and for a brief moment is afraid he is someone else. _'It's just me,'_ Malfoy says to her half-covered form in a rasping voice, and she pretends that she was not afraid, but asleep. She keeps her eyes shut and stays half-hidden beneath the blankets, because she doesn't want to see the blood that she always fears covers him, whether it be his, or someone else's. She falls asleep on those nights to the sound of water running and the knowledge that whether Malfoy is furiously swearing or crying in broken little hitches, he is suffocating in the horror of what he has to do.

She feels sorry for Malfoy, Hermione has realised. Desperately, achingly sorry for the situation he is in, and what he has to do. She could _never_ do what he does, and she isn't sure if that actually makes him much, much stronger than she is, or merely less-good than her. At first she wants to think it is the latter, but she is coming to think that first assessment was wrong.

But now, now the clock ticks onto 5 o'clock, and chimes five cheery times, and Hermione sits up straighter in the armchair, yanked out of her wandering thoughts. Malfoy will be back shortly, and anticipation always threads a little faster through her blood at this time, because what if he has managed to get to the drop point? Or rather: what if he comes in and says that Voldemort wants to see her? What if he has been discovered? What if she is taken away from his protection? _What if, what if? _That dull and ever-present background fear in her mind picks up just a little – sharper and more urgent. She shifts in her seat, adjusting the pair of striped green and white boxers of Malfoy's, which he has transfigured to be trouser-length for her because it would arouse suspicion for him to acquire her any ordinary clothing. So, she wears his clothing, sized down to fit her – today the striped trousers, and a black tee shirt that she wishes he hadn't shrunk down so much; it is tight on her, and she feels exposed.

She watches the door, with her breath caught in her throat.

It creaks faintly when it opens at seven past five, and Malfoy limps in, a box under one arm and a look of disgust on his face. She breathes a sigh of relief when she sees there is no blood on him, no obvious fresh injury, or sign that he has caused harm. The box is large and flat, scarlet-coloured and tied up with shining silver ribbon, and Hermione is curious peeking over the top of her book. Malfoy shoves the door shut behind him with a careless kick back with one foot, and a wave of his wand resets the wards. He glances at Hermione and his look of disgust blanks away; erased utterly in a second. His eyes go as soft as she ever sees them, which still isn't very, and his mouth shapes into a pressed-together, faint half-smile. There is some kind of deep relief and neediness in his face that she doesn't understand.

"Granger," he says in greeting as he shuts his eyes and sways back into the door, toeing his shoes off with a sigh, breaking his established routine. She stares in silence and his eyes flick back up to hers in her absence of greeting. She manages the barest hint of a smile. It feels strange to speak whenever she does, because she does it so little, but she says his name because he seems to expect a greeting in return, and she doesn't want to seem rude when he is being polite. And it is so _odd_, Hermione thinks, that even in captivity she still worries about social niceties – how _stupid_ of her. But…old habit dies hard.

"Malfoy." She sounds scratchy and her voice breaks embarrassingly over the beginning of his name, and she flushes and looks down at her hands, all tight on the book she holds closed in her lap. She wonders again at the strangeness that she can be embarrassed over her voice going funny, when less than a month ago the man whose name she stumbles over was forced to rape her. People are so strange, she thinks as she wobbles her stiff little smile at him – so polite, so civil, just how her mother taught her to be. Acting as if they were just two friendly room-mates, and not a spy and a prisoner trapped together. Malfoy looks away, down at the scarlet box he has tucked beneath his arm, all worn-thin weariness, and a shadow of disgust.

"I couldn't get to the drop point," he says rather unnecessarily, and his voice is thin and strained. "Sorry. Voldemort…had me working in the dungeons today. And I still don't think he's likely to let me off the grounds."

"The dungeons?" she asks, watching him suspiciously now. This break in routine is strange. Malfoy shoves his shoes over to one side of the door and nods, eyes skittering away from her, throat bobbing as he swallows, his shoulders hunching a little as though a chill has seized him.

"Clearing out the cells," he says succinctly, jaw bunching and shoulders hunching further and she understands then, why he looked at her like that, coming in. He has been killing the prisoners that have no further use to Voldemort, and burning the corpses, and it was not that long ago that _she_ was down there. She remembers the stench of the flesh as it burnt, and a sudden sickness rises in her belly. She clamps her lips hard together before she answers, and he watches her with steady eyes that look as if he expects her disgust to be heaped upon him. As if he would take it willingly.

"I'm sor –" she begins, but Malfoy looks down as soon as he realises what she is saying as if he can't stand to hear it from her lips, as if he doesn't deserve it, and her chin trembles and her throat closes up, and she can't finish. He stands with head bowed, frozen by the door for a moment as silence falls over them, and then heads for the bathroom, tossing the scarlet box tied with silver ribbon carelessly on his desk as he passes it. Her eyes fix on that patch of brightness, on that distraction from what they had just been talking about.

"What is that?" Hermione uncurls herself from the armchair and steps toward it, still curious, only for Malfoy to back-pedal fast and slap a hand down onto the flat, rectangular box. The air around him smells strongly of death and smoke, and she breathes through her mouth, resisting the urge to cover her nose and mouth.

"You don't touch the things on my desk, Granger," he says sharply, and she flinches back from the hard edge in his voice. It is true; he told her early on never to touch anything on his desk, and she…well, she wasn't sure if he had wards on the drawers so she hasn't done anything more than skim through what he leaves lying out on top of the polished wood surface, which wasn't anything interesting. She clasps her hands together, and her eyes meet his for a long moment, and she feels a spark of silly success when he is the one who looks away first.

"What is it?" she asks him quietly, and there is a long pause before he finally, reluctantly, answers her.

"A present," Malfoy says tautly, but the tone in which he says it makes Hermione wonder if there is a body part in there, or a venomous snake. It doesn't seem like a _good _present; somehow there is an air of malice and menace that emanates from it. But that makes Hermione no less curious.

"For who?" She spots a label all twisted sideways, and sees her name scribbled on it, and on old instinct reaches out to flip the label over and read what it says more easily, head already tilting as she tries to make out the writing.

"Granger, _don't_," Malfoy begins in a pained voice as he pushes her hand away at the same time as he yanks the box back from her, but it's too late. Her eyes have already skimmed over the few words inked on the silver label, without even needing to turn it over.

'_For the lovely Miss Granger'_ it read, in a flowing, neat script, _'to wear at her Master's pleasure.'_

Hermione's blood runs cold and she lets out a choked gasp and stumbles back a step, as if it _had_ been a venomous snake or human organ. At her Master's pleasure. The words are burnt into her and she cannot make sense of them at all, stunned and shaking. "I…_what?_" she says, and her eyes are wounded and horrified on Malfoy's as she clutches her hands together in front of her, pressing the clasp of them into her stomach. "_What…_what does that mean? Who – who is…?" She has sudden visions of being taken away from Malfoy and given to someone else, and in there is…something that…she doesn't even know. She pushes her hands harder into her stomach, feeling unsteady and sick. "My…master? But…who…?" Fear makes her knees watery and her mind blank and stupid. She thinks for a moment Voldemort must be giving her to someone else.

Malfoy flinches; his hand flexes on the box in a little, angry spasm, and he looks away, out the window with sickened eyes. His jaw clenches and relaxes before he answers, and the words sound wrenched out of him as though they physically hurt to say. "_Me_, Granger. _Me. _I'm…I'm your fucking master."

"…Oh." Of course he is. Hermione hadn't thought…she is so used to thinking of them as…co-conspirators in stuck in this together, that she forgets that in reality she is his slave and he is her master. "Of course."

They stand silently together a moment, Malfoy staring fixedly out the window at his left, and Hermione staring down at the scarlet box, the awkwardness between them palpable. Hermione is rather sure she shouldn't want to know what is in the box anymore, but…she does, perversely. "Is it from…_him_?"

The muscles in Malfoy's jaw bunch up again, and his face is set in a grim kind of glare at nothing as he nods shortly. "Yes. He thought…I don't know what the fuck he thought. Rewarding me for doing such a Merlin-damned good _job_ –" His fists bunch and he snarls the word and looks for a moment as if he might lose control of himself, before sucking in a short huff of air and leaning forward, splaying his hands flat on the desk and hanging his head. He doesn't seem to care how wretched and nakedly miserable he looks to her. "– Doing such a good job today, maybe. K-killing all the prisoners that…that are dying, and…and burning… Burning all the _fucking_ bodies. _Fuck_." He sounds as if he is going to cry as he lifts a hand and slams it back against the desk, breathing hard through parted lips.

Hermione doesn't know what to say. She just stands there awkwardly, with an odd little ache behind her eyes that tells her she wants to cry, only nothing is coming out.

"What's – what's in the box?" she asks after a long moment, and he stares at her with red-rimmed eyes and makes a funny, choked laugh of surprise. His mouth is a slew of bitterness.

"I – I don't know, Granger. Why? Have you decided to play your part prop–"

"_Don't_," Hermione warns him sharper than she thought she was capable of right now. "Don't you _dare._"

Malfoy deflates instantly, apologetic and slumped-weary, shame radiating off him. He lifts a hand from the desk again, this time to wipe at his eyes, which are damp grey and bloodshot.

"Sorry. Sorry," he says thickly, and sniffs wet. "Sorry. I…" But there is no excuse, and she is glad he sees that, trailing away to silence without giving one. His lips press together and he makes a little shaky inhale-exhale that sounds like he is trying not to cry, and on instinct Hermione lays her hand lightly over his on the desk. She isn't thinking at all, just giving comfort as she would to anyone she knew, who she wasn't comfortable enough with to hug. Her fingertips are cool and his are warm. Their eyes meet, and lock. This isn't just anyone; it is _Malfoy_, and her fingers are settled gentle over his on the desk, and she sucks in a sudden, dizzying breath at the realisation.

"It's okay," she says weakly to Malfoy, and then pulls her hand back, squeezing it discreetly into a fist to get rid of the lingering feel of his skin on hers – warm and dry and soft, it wasn't unpleasant, but… Well, it feels strange. She looks down at the box instead of at him – she can feel his eyes on her – and reaches out, dragging it over toward her.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going to see what it is," she says, steeling herself for the sight of something awful, but she wants to know. _Needs_ to know. Even if it is awful and she wishes she hadn't seen it, her curiosity right now is overwhelming and needs to be sated. If she doesn't know _what _it is exactly, she'll always imagine the worst, most abhorrent thing it could be. She'll always wonder. She needs to know.

"Granger…I really don't think that's a good idea."

"You're probably right," she agrees, and pulls the ribbon free with several sharp tugs. Malfoy is silent at her side, and she can feel his uneasy disapproval, but he makes no move to stop her. She lifts the lid off, and opens out the silver tissue paper to find an array of things that make her eyes go wide and her cheeks flush hot. She is afraid to touch them, mostly lest the items be charmed or cursed somehow, but even after Malfoy performs an unasked for scan that finds them clean of curses and charms, she still doesn't.

Laid out on top of what looks like lingerie – all peach-coloured lace, silk, and ribbon – are _things_. Hermione is certainly not experienced, but she is hardly ignorant or naïve about sex, either. She is rather certain she can guess what most of the things are; fine silver chains and clamps, soft black rope and a blindfold, what looks like a collar, and other…even more embarrassing _things_ designed to inflict pain and pleasure, along with a few frightening instruments that look purely designed to inflict torture.

Hermione slams the lid back down, caught somewhere between embarrassment, because _Malfoy_ and _sex things_ and _oh my god_, and disgust, because Voldemort had given these to Malfoy to force her to wear while he raped her repeatedly. She wonders if Voldemort thinks Malfoy has her docile under an Imperius, or if he thinks Malfoy likes her to fight, and scream, and…

"Oh _Merlin_…" she gasps, as the disgust wins out by a landslide, and she feels _ill_, flattening a hand to her middle and turning away. "Get rid of it. Please."

"I can't." The words snap out of Malfoy brusquely, angrily, and she looks up to see him with his eyebrows all drawn down together and his lips pursed slightly, frowning fixedly at the box. Like it is a maths problem he cannot solve, instead of a little box of horrors.

"Why not?" The words rush out of her, hurried by fear, because she knows why already, although she cannot admit it to herself.

"My master might expect us to…" Malfoy pauses and his mouth works without a sound coming out, his features strained and cheeks flushing faintly. He stops, and looks out the window again, squinting into the sunlight that streaks his face. Hermione's hands ball up into fists as she expects with a sense of dread what will come next. "Use it," he finishes coldly but with a slight unsteadiness to the words, unable to look at her as he says them. "At – at another revel, or something similar, perhaps. He…likes his _entertainment._"

"No. No. _No_, Malfoy, I won't. I _can't_…" Panic bubbles up in Hermione as she remembers what it was like last time, with the pain, and the humiliation, and the violation of having her control over her own body taken away from her. The actual act of Malfoy…penetrating her…had been the easiest part to bear. It was everything _else_ that went with it that…that she couldn't stand. That is what makes her want to scream at the thought of going through it again. She shakes her head hard. "_No_." Her eyes are pleading on him and she catches at his sleeve without thinking, fingers twisting in the white cotton. _Begging_ him. "Malfoy. _Please._ I _can't_."

He stares at her blankly for a moment.

"_Please_ –"

"It's not up to _me_, Granger," he says harshly, the blankness on his face breaking into defensive anger, and a hint of hurt. "It's not – if it were up to me you wouldn't have to do anything you didn't fucking well want to. But it's not. If the Dark Lord tells me to bring you to a revel and – and use th-those…" Malfoy stutters to a halt, and rubs a hand over his brow, head bowed and shoulders slumped, other hand using the desk as a prop. He is pallid and his eyes are sick, his mouth is all twisted and shaped with anger and revulsion. "Then I will, if it is the only way to keep us both alive. Whether you like it or not." He pauses after saying that – freezes a moment – and then swears harsh and angry under his breath and turns away sharply, muttering something that Hermione can't make out as she stares at him, arms hugging herself tight. His shoulders flex and hunch, his back to her, and his hands sweep up through his hair in frantic little motions.

"_Fuck_," he swears then, loudly, and turns enough to lash out and knock the box violently off the desk. His whole frame _vibrates_ with anger, and his breath comes hard, face contorting in a grim anger. "This is what I have been reduced to! _This!_" Hermione stumbles back a hasty few steps, hugging herself tighter and staring at him with big, worried eyes. She doesn't know if she should retreat and let this sudden rage run its course, try to soothe him, or tell him briskly to snap out of it. She doesn't know if he's angry at _her_, or…

"He's got me fucking playing his games…got me being _part_ of…_'Whether you like it or not'_ –" Malfoy quotes what he said only a moment ago, apparently disgusted by his own words. Hermione watches him cautiously, eyes flicking between his wand hand and his face. "I – I didn't mean that, Granger. I'd really rather you didn't get us killed but – but I'm not going to force you to do anything. I'm not going to let him make me…any more a part of this than I already am." He means the words he says – she can tell by the resigned, nearly relieved tone he has, and the determined set of his shoulders. And it surprises her, her eyebrows arching.

"If you want me to get rid of these –" He waves a hand at the contents of the box, now strewn around it on the floor. "– Then I will."

"Put it all away. Somewhere out of sight," Hermione says before she can rethink the decision, her jaw tight and her fists clenched at her sides. She feels all numb and stiff, and she wants to curl up into a ball and cry until she runs out of tears, but instead she lifts her chin and looks Malfoy in the eye. Her voice is unsteady but certain. "I – I don't want to die."

So now she has another possibility to dread.

But the look Malfoy gives her, as she forces herself to kneel down and help him gather up the contents of the box, is filled with a deep respect. It makes her feel stronger, somehow.

* * *

She is woken from hazy dreams of good things to swearing and pain – not her own for once, thank Merlin for small favours. But there is still a moment where she is filled with half-asleep panic that terrible things will happen, shaken rudely into wakefulness as Malfoy hisses out her name amongst a slew of curses.

"Fucking _Merlin_ this fucking _hurts_. _Granger. _Wake the _fuck_ up, Granger, I need – need some ass-ass-assistance here," he gets out thickly, and she is struggling upright and rubbing her eyes, staring at him with frightened, bleary eyes.

"_Wha'?_" she slurs frantically as she shoves the last stubborn locks of hair off her face, and then her gazes focus on him; Malfoy, shirtless, with blood smearing his face, and pain crinkling his brow. "_Malfoy!_ What in Merlin's name –!"

Her mind flashes and flickers before she remembers everything coherently. He had gone out shortly before she'd gone to bed. There had been a revel planned, which Malfoy had told her about over dinner earlier in the night. Voldemort had apparently told Malfoy to bring Hermione to it, and he'd made excuses to Voldemort – said that she wasn't up to the task, as he'd been rather too rough on her the night before. Which had put a mental image in Hermione's head that had made her feel sick – but besides that she had also been worried that Malfoy would get in trouble for not giving Voldemort what he'd wanted. _'_

_I said – I said I would,_" she had offered uncertainly, with her appetite suddenly vanished to nowt as nausea raged up. Malfoy had just shaken his head and shrugged as he'd forked up a green bean, and said,_ 'Don't worry about it, Granger; he didn't seem to mind.'_

Apparently, he _had _minded.

"Malfoy!" Hermione scrambles up out of the bedcovers, onto the cold rug beside the bed in bare feet, and he is staring at her glazedly with huge grey eyes, his face all blood. Her hands hover in the air, wanting to reach out and steady him – touch his face, grab his arm, but she isn't sure where or how he is hurt. He coughs – there is the heavy scent of alcohol on his breath bursting in a suffocating cloud against her face – and then nearly doubles over, his hand flailing out and landing on her shoulder. He leans heavily on her for a moment, gasping raggedly, before pushing himself upright once more as she says his name again, urgent. The stench of alcohol makes her crinkle her nose as he lifts his head and stares blindly at her.

"_Malfoy_. What happened?" She is clear and firm, like a teacher talking to a rather dim preschooler. He blinks and staggers back a step unsteadily, hand grabbing not at her now, but one of the bed posts, fingers clenching white-knuckled around it as he wrenches in wobbling gusts of air. He looks gone behind the eyes; glazed and stunned, and she is overflowing with a sharp, bubbling worry.

"I – he had me – had me fucking _flogged_, Granger," Malfoy says dazedly, swaying on his feet, and her lips part as she sucks in a shocked breath. "He had me _flogged_," he repeats, and his pupils are pinpricks in his irises and he is shocky and shaking. "For - forty lashes. Salazar's sake, it _hurts_ so fucking _bad_." He sounds almost ridiculously _indignant_ about it all, and if the situation weren't so serious Hermione would nearly want to laugh at him.

Instead she makes her sleep-dulled body _move_, rounding Malfoy to take in the damage to his back – one hand gripping his upper arm to keep him from turning with her, which he tries to do. He is not just half-dead on his feet, but most definitely very drunk. Hermione's eyes pop wide as she takes in the devastation to his back, and she makes a strangled, sick sound. The pale skin of Malfoy's back is now a crisscross mangled quilt of raw, bleeding flesh – laid open to the yellow fat beneath the skin in some places, and she gulps down bile. It must be agonisingly painful – she is amazed that he made it all the way up to their room without passing out.

_Their room_ – she realises she'd thought, blanching at how easily it has become that in her mind, and then pushes such irrelevant things out of her head and focuses on the man barely staying upright in front of her.

"Lie down," she tells him, because if he falls he will regret it, and she isn't sure if she will be able to get him upright again without magic, and she isn't sure that she should rely on his wand working properly for her. She would rather not try to levitate Malfoy and end up exploding him accidentally.

"Wh-where?" he asks through gritted teeth, looking uncertainly over his torn up shoulder at her. She gives him a scathing _look_ that Ron and Harry are well familiar with. They call it the 'just do whatever she says, mate' look, and cower beneath it, always complainingly obedient when she levels it on them. Dealing with men who have been hurt – usually through their own stupidity – is second nature to Hermione, and she slips into the role of the bossy caregiver with ease, forgetting herself in it. It is _nice_, in a strange kind of way, to don the mantle of carer and have everything else cease to matter, for a little while at least.

"On the _bed_, you idiot!" She pushes at his upper arm – skin warm beneath her hand and marked with sticky blood spatter – and it is like trying to shift a boulder; he is essentially immovable, because although he sways forward slightly at her push, he rocks back into place again immediately. "Malfoy, you _git_. Stop it! You need to lie down before you _fall down_," she snaps at him, and he twists and throws her a confused, amused, pain-drenched look.

"So kitten has remembered she has claws?" Malfoy gets out with a choked half-laugh. "And all it took was me getting – _fuck_ – shredded to bloody bits. _Shit. _Well worth it. A bargain, really." Sarcasm tints his last few words, and the half of his mouth that she can see makes a rictus of a smile. Hermione just tsks and shakes her head at him, out of patience and half-worried he is going to say something that will _hurt_, that will ruin everything, that will _remind _her, that will send her into a tailspin of flashbacks and horror that ends with her huddled in the armchair and him without any help.

"You're _drunk_, Malfoy. Shut up," she says with barely a shake to her voice, and for a miracle, he does. He doesn't resist her subsequent awkward manhandling of him either, although it takes several minutes and a great deal of pained whimpers and grunts to get him facedown on the bed. She places his wand on the bedside table, with an aim to try using it after she has gotten Malfoy comfortable; it feels friendly enough in her hand, but she thinks she will practice with a few simple charms before she attempts to heal him with it.

"'s warm…" he slurs muffled into the bed, lying where she had been before he'd woken her, and she shifts uncomfortable on her feet at that. "Nice," he mumbles, the half of his mouth that she can see curving up in a wounded, drunken smile, and she stares at him helplessly for a moment. Still in his shoes, arms bent so that his hands make loose fists by his head, which is turned to one side so that he can breathe – and gaze at her with one bloodshot, bleary eye.

"I'll take your shoes off," she tells him instead of making the quip about how it was nice and warm because he'd stolen her spot, which had risen automatically to her tongue. She stays herself from saying it because he is Malfoy not Harry or Ron, and it makes her stupidly, suddenly, uncomfortable right through. He gives a grunt of affirmation, and she fumbles with his shoes and keeps being distracted by his back. It is still bleeding here and there, sluggish seeping that makes her stomach turn, and her fingers slip and stumble on his shoelaces as her eyes keep flicking back to the destruction wreaked on his once-smooth skin. His breath comes in shallow, hitching gasps, and his lips are pressed hard together, and that distracts her too as she struggles to yank his shoes off.

A thought occurs to her as she gets water from the bathroom, having rummaged through the cabinets and cupboards in fruitless search of any disinfecting agents – of course a wizarding residence wouldn't have any handy Muggle things like that. It is a thought that Hermione doesn't like much, and she gnaws her lips full of worry over it.

"I _can_ heal you, can't I?" she asks Malfoy nervously, as she sets the bowl of warm water and a soft cloth down on the bedside table. His silence says enough. Oh god no. "_Malfoy_." His name is a plea on her lips, filled with sympathy and horror and soul-deep weariness. But then what did she expect; she should have realised that from the start. _Stupid_.

Hermione's fists clench at her sides in her anger, and water from the cloth she had dipped in the bowl runs down her green and white striped trousers and drips onto her foot. "_Shit,_" she says, and she is talking about more than just her wet trousers. She shuts her eyes and takes a deep breath, and when she looks at him again, Malfoy's fringe has fallen over his one visible eye. His face is little but a fall of hair and bitten lips. She shifts the wet cloth from her right hand to her left, and leans forward and pushes his fine, pale hair back for him with warm, damp fingers.

"So. What _can_ I do?" she asks Malfoy as she straightens, angry but resigned, and she doesn't understand the nuances of his expression before he speaks again.

"Cleaning the wounds and binding them up should be acceptable to – to my master," he tells her in a quiet tone, lone grey eye thoughtful on her behind the pain.

"All right," she says faintly, her eyes skimming over the brutality inflicted on his back, feeling sick to her stomach at the thought of touching it, at the thought of causing him pain, of… She swallows hard and nods, voice firmer. "All right. I can do that."

His wand works well for her – if well means that she doesn't blow anything up. It feels friendly enough to her hand, but is weak – the charms she tries only work about half the time, and when they do work, they are pitiful compared to what she could accomplish with her own wand. But several numbing charms later she is left staring at his back with her hands fisted at her hips, biting the tip of her tongue lightly and wishing she had taken the time to learn some kind of cleansing charm - complicated spells - rather than having lazily relied on her ability to always have Muggle antiseptics on hand. It's too late now though.

She raids Malfoy's alcohol cabinet in the end – it will be _wasting_ the firewhiskey to use it on his back, he laments through gritted teeth, and she – flushed with a bolstering shot or three of the stuff herself – pours a generous drizzle of it into his mouth. He laughs and mumbles something incoherent after swallowing, her name in the muddle somewhere, his eyes shut and skin damp with sweat, shivering from reaction to having his wounds cleaned of debris first with magically boiled water.

Malfoy hasn't made any of the process easy, despite his odd, drunken cheerfulness in the face of what has to be sheer agony. He had refused to let Hermione _stupefy_ him, and she had said that she couldn't trust him to keep still and she couldn't have him moving, and in the end they had settled for magically lashing his arms to the bedposts in some awful mimicry of bondage. It keeps him still though, which is the important part. The sight of his arms stretched across the bed in a horizontal parody of crucifixion is unsettling though.

"Just fucking do it, Granger," he mumbles, and she makes a whimper, stand at his back with the bottle tilting nearly enough, but not quite.

"I don't know if the numbing charms took well enough."

"It'll have to do. I've taken worse. _Done_ worse." He grits out the last bit with an angry self-loathing, and although the words make her burn hot and think of what he did to her, with an embarrassed sort of violated horror, she doesn't think he is talking about her. Actually. She bites her tongue again, harder this time – enough that it twinges reproachfully at her. "Just do it."

So she does.

He clamps his mouth shut on a scream - a yell of pain that makes Hermione jerk the bottle back up and stare at him wide-eyed and apologetic, her hands trembling, sweat making them clammy. The alcohol runs in rivulets over his ruined back, seeking out the channels of his wounds, and he turns his face into the pillow and yells again, stifled and wordless. The wiry muscles in his shoulders and arms flex and slide beneath the skin as he wrenches at his bonds, and Hermione swallows hard and watches him in misery.

She should just keep going, Hermione supposes. Get it all over with quickly, rather than draw it out. She would ask Malfoy what he would prefer, but he is rather too busy making anguished sounds into the bed. Sweat breaks out under her armpits and on her forehead, hot at the nape of her neck and above her upper lip, and she apologises as she bathes his back in alcohol, and listens to his screams. She tells him to hold on. That it won't take much longer. That he's doing so well.

She isn't sure if it helps him to hear that or if he even notices through the pain, but it helps her a little. Helps her cope as she trickles the liquid on his skin and watches him tense as stiff as if she has sent electricity surging through him, hears him make anguished sounds into the bed. Hermione is weak and wobbly as a half-set jelly by the time she is done, tears stabbing up in her eyes. Malfoy is silent, except for his sobbing breaths.

"It's done," she says feebly and lifts the bottle to her lips. It burns a path down to her stomach. "It's _done_." Relief saturates her and she can see Malfoy's muscles unwind and he stops pulling at the binds holding him still. Collapsing all boneless and letting out a shaky sigh from a throat screamed horribly hoarse. The sheet around him is patched wet with water and alcohol, and she nearly forgets to release his bonds as she stares at one splotch which looks like a hummingbird.

"Thank fucking _Merlin_ it's over," Malfoy croaks, lifting his head from the mattress. "Took you bloody long enough to do it," he complains then, and he sounds so much like Ron for a moment that Hermione makes a startled noise that could be a laugh, or maybe a sob. It hurts in so many different ways.

_Everything_ hurts, for a moment. Every_one _hurts, and Hermione hugs herself tight and tries not to cry. She fails. She sits down on the damp bed by Malfoy's hip and lets the sobs shake her shoulders and the tears trace runnels down her cheeks and drip off her jaw. She clutches the firewhiskey bottle pointlessly in one hand and shakes with the force of her grief and hurt. For Malfoy, and for Ron and Harry and the others who she knows must think her dead or worse, and for the dead women in the dungeon, and the people Malfoy has hurt and killed, and - and for _herself_.

"Damnit," Malfoy complains and then hisses, and the bed shifts and Hermione struggles to keep her balance, glancing up and swiping at her salt-sticky damp cheeks even as her tears continue to fall.

"Oh! Be careful!" she cries in a snotty, gasping voice, and grabs at his arm as he struggles onto all fours. "D-don't – you'll hurt yourself!" Her breath whoops unevenly in and shudders out again involuntarily; embarrassingly caught in her sobbing fit and unable to quell it completely. "Oh god I'm a wreck…Jesus…I'm sorry…" she says through a veil of tears, in wobbling fluctuations of breath, shoulders hitching and chest catching and hurting. It is as though the floodgates have been opened, and she can do nothing but ride out the barrage.

She can't even stop long enough to take a swig of firewhiskey, and Malfoy nicks it neatly off her as he settles on the bed beside her with a strangled groan. He sits back a little bit further than her, so that his knees settle as tidily over the edge of the bed as hers. Wrinkles from the bedding are imprinted on his cheek and temple, and his lips are raw and bloodied, and alcohol makes a sheen on them over the blood. "I-I-I'm suh-suh-sorry, Malfoy," she hiccups through her flood of crying, and unexpectedly he smiles with those bloodied lips, lopsided and gentle, all written through with drunkenness and hints of pain.

"You – you do this when – when I'm pissed and hurt," he says of her sobbing, and necks the bottle. Coughs and makes a harsh little _ha _as the firewhiskey no doubt blazes a trail through his innards. She looks up to meet his eyes, and his eyelashes are spiky with wetness and his irises look dark by the lamplight. "Have to do it right now when I'm –" he goes on, and she moves to apologise through her miserable, embarrassing tears, and he swears and explains. "– Fuck. No, no it's fine. Don't apologise. Really, Granger. Just…"

She jolts in her skin with sudden fright as his arm snakes naked and hot around the back of her shoulders, and his voice is scratchy and dry. "…I'm not quite with it, am I? I can't give you proper comfort, and such. Or whatever. You know." She doesn't really know, but she nods anyway, and goes with Malfoy's unexpected tug as he pulls her close to him. She bumps up to the feverish heat of sweat-damp skin, the hardness of spare fat and lean muscle beneath. _Malfoy_. And she can't think. He is all pulled and pushed and pressed against her like _then_, only it isn't _then_ it is _now_.

"Oh," she says on an exhale, because he is hot and solid and real, and Merlin it is _nice_. His fingers curl around her upper arm, his arm bracing along her back as it shudders with sobs, and if she lets her head rest – she does – then it tucks neatly beneath his jaw, her cheek pressed to his chest just below the faint jut of his collarbone. She can feel the rise and fall of his breaths rasping in and out, up and down. She can feel the pump of his heart; all that blood, ever-moving, never stopping. Lub-dub. Her hands stay curled back in her lap and she doesn't touch him, and she cries with pathetic wretchedness until her nose is running snot over her lip and she feels sick to her stomach.

And Malfoy _does_ give Hermione proper comfort with that silent, tight half-hug – not that comfort is much good to her. It doesn't change anything. But…he is there, and that is _something_.

Finally her tears dry up, and with a last shuddering breath, her wretched sobbing comes to a hitching close. She can hear the reverberation of Malfoy's heart beating against her cheek and ear, and his fingers rub little circles on her upper arm through the tee shirt of his that she wears. The position suddenly seems horribly, horrendously intimate, and awkward beyond belief. Hermione gulps down a lungful of air and jerks away from him – his arm eases away from her immediately, and they are left sitting side by side, thighs and knees nudging together on the bed. She lifts eyes that feel swollen and tender to his, and his face is still and solemn, his gaze digging into hers with an intensity that swiftly melts away to a cool, detached kind of concern. The air is thick, and Hermione feels hollowed out and insubstantial in it, like an empty seedpod. Tears gone, she is an exhausted, worn husk, and his eyes are too clear and too steady on hers. She drops her gaze.

"I should bandage your back," she says abruptly, and stands up with jerky, awkward movements, feeling stiff from sitting awkwardly, and oddly off-balance. Malfoy doesn't say anything, just grunts acknowledgement and takes a long swig from the bottle of firewhiskey, which is now nearly empty; she doesn't know how drunk he is exactly, but she suspects the answer is: _very_. She clears her throat and then tries to use his wand to transfigure a pillowslip into neat rolls of stretchy bandage, and it only takes her several tries, a little swearing, and Malfoy's obvious amusement.

"Do you want me to do it?" he asks at one point, a corner of his mouth tipping up.

""No! You're drunk, and that makes things go _wrong_. You certainly won't do any better than me, and you're more likely to blow us up," she snaps back, frustrated at the stupid transfiguration spell now and made snippy with it. She catches his lopsided flash of a grin out of the corner of her eye, her own lips twitch in response. She forces them down into a concentrated frown, and focuses on the bandages, getting them right this time. Hermione's crow of success is involuntary and swiftly stifled, but she knows he hears before she bottles it, and her cheeks flame up.

But Malfoy just sits obediently, wincing as she gets him to lift his arms up slightly so she can wind the bandage around beneath them. Her fingers brush over his skin as she bandages his torso, from shoulders to lower back, and she is acutely aware of all the little touches. Of the smooth, hard angles and planes of his chest and abdomen under her palms, and the ragged, uneven wounds of his shredded back as she so carefully smoothes the bandage down into place. It takes an awful lot of bandaging, and she isn't sure it's the best thing to do – his wounds will weep overnight and that will make the bandage hard to remove – but she doesn't feel right about just leaving them open to the air while he is sleeping either. He could hurt himself, couldn't he?

So bandages it is, and if she needs to soak them off, then magic will help with that, won't it, Hermione thinks. "All done," she says quietly at last, and falters a small half-smile, eyes flicking to him and fast away again.

"Thank you, Granger," he says simply and too sincere. She shrugs, staring down at her bare toes, twiddling his wand around and around in her hands. She both wishes that she hadn't cried herself to a snotty wreck on him, and feels better for doing so. As if some small part of her burden has dissipated, and it feels easier to stand straight. She doesn't know what to say or do now, though. She feels as though something crucial has changed in the dynamic between them. Like one of the walls separating them has just been demolished, and while she has extra room to move, she isn't sure she likes it. And then Malfoy seizes the tip of his wand in a pincer grip to still her aimless twirling, and automatically she looks at him.

"Do you want a drink?" he asks her, a smirk twisting over his mouth like mischief and invitation, and emboldened by a new sense of freedom, the stress of the last hour, and the drink she has already had, Hermione bites her lips and nods.

"All right."

* * *

Malfoy is a quiet drunk, and so is she. Two sheets to the wind – no, four, at _least_ she decides in a hazed attempt at drunken pedantry. She giggles, madly, hysterically, lying on the bed with a glass of firewhiskey and feeling as blitzed as she has ever been. They don't talk. But he lies on the bed beside her – close enough that she could reach out and trace the straight line of his nose if she wanted, which she doesn't – and it is companionable. There is a strange pleasantness to this sea of emotion churning through her. Sadness and grief and anger and a hazy, mellow absence of caring. Hermione revels in it as she stares up at the canopy of the bed. She charmed it to look like a Muggle visualisation before she got too drunk. It is colour-changing swirls and whirls, mesmerising and hypnotic, and she feels like she is swelling and expanding and contracting again with the image.

"Will I ever get home?" she asks softly, the question coming up from nowhere. She sinks her teeth into her lower lip immediately after it escapes, and then lifts her head enough to take a wobbly sip of firewhiskey. "Shit."

Malfoy is silent for a long moment. Then he rolls his head to the side, to face her, and she follows suit, blinking at him owlishly. His eyes glow silver-purple in the glow of the charmed visualiser, and his tongue is dark purple-pink when he wets his lips before he speaks. "Yes. I promise."

"Don't make promises you can't keep," she tells him, feeling tears try to come crawling up again, and inside her head she swears at herself furiously and blames the alcohol. "Truly, Malfoy. Don't. Please."

He is silent for another few moments that seem to stretch out forever, and Hermione watches the thoughts cross over his face, fleeting and highlighted by the changing colours. "You'll either get home, or we'll both be dead."

A beat.

"Oh." That is…acceptable, to Hermione. She nods and looks back up at the ebbing and pulsing of the image above them, gnawing on her lip and thinking. "What – what about you, Malfoy. Will you ever get home?"

"I don't have a home, Granger." It should sound trite, but it just sounds horribly sad.

"You – you could come with me," she offers stupidly, lilting, hopeful tone like a child's, and he makes a soft noise that could be a huff of laughter, bitter, but not aimed to hurt her, and it doesn't. It just makes her sadder. She stares at him in profile, all lit up green now. _Slytherin_. His face is sharp and sad, and there is a set to his jaw – a bunching of the muscles there, a measured swallow – that speaks of a grim determination that Hermione has seen in Harry and Ron. That they claim to have seen in her. A sense of duty in the face of unspeakable awfulness. He shuts his eyes for the count of ten, because she counts in her drunken fuddle – and when he opens them again he still doesn't look at her.

"If I can retain my position, I have to stay. I am –" Malfoy's voice breaks slightly and his cheeks darken, he clears his throat and takes a sip of firewhiskey from the bottle he has claimed his. She doesn't know how he is still _conscious_ with the amount he has drunk, and Hermione suspects that perhaps he spent a great deal of his time drinking before her arrival in his life. That would explain the longing looks at the liquor cabinet, at least, and his considerable tolerance to it.

He tries again: "– I am too valuable a source of information for the Order to lose, with Severus dead. With what I can give the Order, they are able to make strikes that damage my master's efforts greatly. Infrequent, yes, because otherwise he would know there was a rat, and soon discover it was me, but still. I am an…asset to your precious _Potter._" The venom in Malfoy's voice is overwhelming; all resigned, hateful bitterness, and Hermione finds herself wanting to recoil from it. She doesn't.

"It's wrong, that you have to do this," she says instead very quietly, stating the obvious – oh _marvellous_, Hermione, she thinks sarcastically in a daze of liquor, her eyes darting from Malfoy's mouth to his eyes and back again. His throat clicks dryly as he swallows, and his voice is thick.

"Yeah," he says.

"I – I don't blame you. I did, but –"

"I _know_ you did."

She frowns at his interruption. "I did, but I don't anymore."

Malfoy attempts a smile, or at least she thinks he does, because he fails miserably. "I'm…that's good. I'm..."

"You're what?"

"I'm really not a monster, you know. I have to – have to do monstrous things, but I'm not a – not really. Or that's what I tell myself. Maybe I'm just lying to make myself feel better." He props himself up on one elbow, staring into her eyes with an intensity that only the very, very drunk can achieve. Hermione feels as though he is looking for absolution in her face, and she doesn't know if she has the right to give that to him. "Am I a monster, Granger? Do you really not blame me? You – you'd have every right to blame me. To hate me. Would you? I suppose…after what I did…" Malfoy is rambling and lost in his head, eyes glazing over as Hermione pushes herself up on an elbow too, gulping down the last of her firewhiskey for courage and feeling her stomach gurgle and lurch in protest.

She drops her glass to the bed between them, and reaches out, bridging the gap.

Hermione lays her hand along Malfoy's cheek, conforming it to the shape of him, and his eyes lift to hers startled and glazed-intent, like he is trying to find her through a sea of fog. She sways in toward him unintentionally as he shifts on the bed and the landscape changes beneath her. A startled gasp and she is drunken and her reflexes are slow, and her nose is bumping against his before she can stop herself. She chokes a giggle, but his breath stutters in and his hand comes up to push gentle into the tangles of her hair, as if to push her back and steady her. And then there is electricity in the air, and her lungs suddenly feeling squeezed to nothing, her breath catching in her chest. His fingers curl deliberately and slowly, and his fingertips scrape light at the base of her skull.

_What._

_What?_ Hermione thinks in a stunned-frozen sort of way, trying and failing to process what is happening. And there is a _moment_, before she pushes back a little. A handful of heartbeats, where their eyes lock until she goes cross-eyed, and all wobbly in her stomach from the drink. The _firewhiskey_. She shoves a few inches away, using the front of his shoulder for leverage, her fingers holding tight to the heat of him, his bare skin and the jut and hard lines of skin and muscle-swathed bone. Her thumb grazes the base of his throat, and his hand is in her _hair._ Tentative and light, ready to pull away at the slightest sign from her it seems, because his eyes are cautious on hers through the drunkenness, and his muscles taut. She is glad of that caution, but she doesn't give him a sign.

"You're not a monster, Malfoy. I promise," she tells him instead, while his fingers start soothing through her hair and she lets him, because why not, if he wants to? She is too drunk to care about things like that, any more than _'ooh, it feels so nice, mm, just like that,'_ which she definitely doesn't say, because things are already weird enough. She feels like they probably shouldn't be doing this, but it feels so _nice. _Their noses nearly bump again as his drunken fingers give a too-enthusiastic scritch and push her head forward, and she grins, and they are both lit green-blue in the light of the visualiser, and he grins back lopsided and achingly earnest. Her eyes linger on his mouth as his grin fades, his fingers moving rhythmically and his mouth relaxing into a shape that…that is almost a pout but not quite…and…

And.

And.

And then she throws up on the bed between them.

* * *

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